MATTSLOG.COM

This just happened... one of the space youtubers I follow has been selected for the Dear Moon mission. He is literally going to go to the moon! ... Well, around the moon technically... Don't even know the guy personally but it still feels like I'm personally involved since I've been following his channel for so long. 

Here is an example of what can happen when you pursue something with all your energy and all your heart. It's going to be an insane ride and I'm looking forward to following it every step of the way! 

The only reason why there isn't a space elevator yet is due to the lack of a strong enough material for the tether that can be manufactured at scale. However the International Space Elevator Consortium deems single crystal graphene to be a material suitable for a space elevator tether and recently there has been quite a bit of progress in regards to the manufacturing technique of said material. Large single crystal graphene is possible.

MIT has published an article in 2020 highlighting their new role to role production method that can produce any length continuous sheets of single layer graphene. They say it could be scaled up fairly easily. 

The south Korean company Charmgraphene seems to have done just that. Now all that's needed is a company with the focus on building a space elevator that puts it all together. Elon?

Put a little bit of money into this absolute gamble play on BSC yesterday. I'm giving it a 99% chance of failure... but at 2% return per day this project only needs to last a little over 50 days until break even. Anything after that is basically free income. Fingers crossed it lasts a good way past the 50 day mark.

Decided, after some consideration, to split the cyberdoll dev blog out into its own brand. Thus begins the arduous process of copying one blog post at a time over to the other site... as there seems to be no other way of doing this... (there probably is)

So... it's been a while since my last log... let's see, how does this work again? Wow, looks like it's been a whole year! ... and Teslas next AI Day is just around the corner at the end of next month. Can't wait to see what progress they've been making on Suboptimus Prime. 

Just wanted to make a quick note that SpaceX just came out and announced that their new starlink satellites will be able to communicate directly with mobile phones! This is a fundamental game changer! No more dead zones anywhere on the globe no matter what the infrastructure. 

Brilliant tweet there by Patrick Hedger. Need to keep this image on my phone for anyone who says stupid things about space projects.

After months of waiting I finally managed to get my hands on an Elegoo Saturn resin printer. All the essential equipment has arrived. Time to test!

Finished putting together a video on how to make these today. Not used to making videos so it's a little cringy... but one has to start somewhere.

Made the mould model available for download on Patreon. 

Rest in peace SN9... Go SN10!! 

12.5 K flight of starship SN9 seems to be imminent and SN10 is already cuing up.

Reddit users pump GameStop stock, short seller are getting wracked, exchanges shut down buy orders.

I'm extremely excited because when listening to this interview I found out that one of the biggest supporters of the SENS Research Foundation is Vitalik Buterin!!!

Two of my biggest interest (rejuvenation biotech and blockchain) are converging and that's very good to see!

Watching SN8 take to the skies and belly flop back to earth sent chills down my spine and literally brought a tear to my eye!

I had not expected so much to go right in this first flight. Amazing! Fingers crossed SN9 can stick the landing.

I'm making Eric the viking available for download here on sketchfab. 

Instead of filling a balloon with a light gas to make it fly... what if it was possible to just have NO gas at all in a volume to achieve lift. In other words a complete vacuum. Would that make a significant difference to buoyancy?  The problem of course is the crushing pressure of the atmosphere so the shell would need to be strong to withstand it, adding weight. But what if you had a hollow sphere made from aerogel and coated it with a thin layer of an air tight material... Would that be strong enough to maintain a vacuum inside it without being crushed? ... and would a construction like that be light enough to float up into the atmosphere? 

Wish I had more time learning science stuff so I could answer these questions.

After over a decade I gave Aleysha 2008 a little brush up and made her available for download here on sketchfab. 

Had a brief look at app.rarible.com today. The sign up and creation process was really easy so I made a non fungible token out of a painting of a Mario sprite I did a decade ago in Artrage. 

Also checked out Pixeos on the EOS blockchain... but the interface is ridiculous. Could not figure it out after 5 minutes so moved on. There are also a few more of these NFT art sites on Ethereum but they looked really dry and wanky and have complicated sign up sign up procedures so... I'll not spend any more time on this right now.

We recently rediscovered that shooting arrows with a bow is heaps of fun so we got a set of bows and arrows. One for us grown ups and one for the kids. However the kids bow came without a... thing that holds the arrow on the handle of the bow. So I ordered one. But that then came without a thing that attaches it to the handle of the bow... so I just measured the handle up and 3d printed one. Works perfectly now :).

Tesla battery day certainly was interesting! The implications of what they have revealed are far reaching ;). However... it is making me rethink my plans for ordering a Tesla now. This news is causing a bit of an Osborne effect on me as it seems like this is really something that's worth patiently waiting for... also... I really don't need a new car right now... also... I don't actually have the money to order one lol. 

But on the plus side... Tesla stock is down today so perhaps I can afford to buy another share or two of the company while I wait. 

Lost count on how many times I've moved domains now... Could go back and check but that feels like time not well spent. Since this is becoming more of a generalized blog rather than a dedicated site to the development of cyberdoll... I've decided to rename it to mattslog.com. As in synonymous for log book... (not turd) just to clarify. I'll dedicate a page on here to the development of Aleysha and make files available for download there. 

Cusco in Peru has some curious polygonal masonry architecture. I am intrigued by these huge blocks of granite. They often weigh many tons each and no two blocks are exactly the same. They are irregular in shape and size yet they are joined together so perfect that not even a piece of paper would fit in between them and no mortar is needed to hold them in place. Some of them are arranged in neat rows yet others seem to have been roughly thrown together with little regard to surface finish or accuracy... accept for in the joints between them!

The rocks don't look like they were shaped with chisels and hammers... To me they look more like they have been soft and malleable at some point. Especially in areas where the walls have been damaged (image on the right) and the joint surfaces are exposed. The stones have a sort of "lip" on their edge where they would have joined up with other rocks. It looks as though they were soft like putty at the time of placement. Their weight would have squished them together and formed perfect joints between them. That would also explain the bulging pillow shape. Why would you go through the trouble of carving something like that with bronze tools as we are told the Inka supposedly did?

These megalithic granite walls are always the foundation underneath what looks like crude Inka construction and repairs on top. So they must be older. It looks more like the Inka did not build these structures but inherited them from an unknown civilization that was able to shape these stones in ways that we don't yet understand. It looks like the builders of these walls used this method of construction because it was the easiest method for them. The Inka used mortar and loose rocks and fragments of the megalithic buildings to fix and rebuild the structures they found. 

Above Cusco lies Sacsaywaman with even more impressive architecture. Here the megaliths that make up the walls can weigh up to 100 tons... yet they still have been assembled with perfect precision in the joints. It looks like the same construction method. I even see indentations in the surfaces of the rocks that - to me - look like someone prodded the rocks into place while they were still malleable. I would not even be surprised if this was not a long construction but rather something that was quickly thrown together for some purely practical purpose. 

Things start to become really curious when taking a closer look at the pyramids in Egypt. On the third pyramid of Giza there are some of the original granite casing stones left in place... and they exibit similar features as the walls found in Cusco!

On this wall it looks like the builders were capable of quickly putting stones into place that conform to what ever surface was underneath and then going over them to achieve a smooth surface finish on the outside as seen around the portal that leads inside the pyramid. The pillow shaped surfaces here are flattened as if someone went over them with a big rolling pin. How could this same type of construction exist in Egypt and Peru at a time where these two cultures supposedly did not yet know of each others existence?

Unfortunately the site has been quarried heavily over the past centuries and most of the original casing stones of the pyramids can now be found in the walls of buildings in Cairo but these casing stones that are still in their original place show the exact same method of construction as the ones found in Peru. Granite, perfect joints... and what are those curious nobs? 

So... perhaps who ever built these walls knew how to make a type of granite concrete? Probably not because there are more examples of granite being malleable in quarries.

This is the unfinished obelisk in the Aswan quarry in Egypt. It has an estimated weight of 1200 tons. It is still attached to the bedrock so it is a work in progress piece that can provide insights into how these things were actually cut out. 

Bronze and copper tools and chisels? It looks more like someone with an over sized ice cream scoop started scooping away at the granite as if it were butter. I think what's missing here is perspective. We try to explain what we observe with the certainty that previous civilizations were more primitive the further back in time we go. What if civilization was merely reset by a cataclysmic event such as the younger dryas period? And what if they had technologies for cutting and forming stone that differ vastly from the methods we use today? We try to explain what we see through the lens of our current understanding and state of technology. But could there be other paths of technological evolution that result in methods that don't rely on heavy machinery and mechanical leverage? Methods that are lost to us today?

Practiced stone sculpting in Zbrush today. Here is the result. This guy actually prints fairly well on my ender 3. 

With all the crazy currency printing going on lately I decided to buy some silver combi bars today. Seems to be a good price currently and who knows how much longer you can even get some.

Today I learned about the difference between currency and money thanks to this great series.

I think as a result of this corona virus crisis the world is currently going through, many more people will soon understand the importance of the store of value aspect of true money.

The trillions of dollars that are currently being printed will dilute the currency supply, drive up prices considerably and thereby transfer wealth out of peoples pockets and bank accounts to the government and the banking system.

But what types of true money are there? I can think of gold, silver and bitcoin. They have a fixed  supply (at least in the case of Bitcoin) and are therefore a good store of value. So now would be a good time to transfer some currency into money before the effects of the currency printing are being felt. Guess that's what I'll be doing today!

Sometimes I wonder what the world might look like if none of us had to worry about money and could focus on doing things simply because they are worth doing.

I need to plan my activities around making an income. Money decides how I spend nearly all hours of my day. This is the same for most people... but what if all our basic needs like shelter, food, clothing and healthcare were taken care of by "Jarvis" AI, automation and robots powered by renewable energy? Would we even still need money then? Would it be freeing for humanity?

Building rockets to go colonize Mars wouldn't be expensive anymore if there was no money. We would simply do it just because it is worth doing. 

What would I do? I can think of a million things I'd like to do and know more about but don't have the time/money to explore.

Starship prototype SN1 was destroyed during a pressure test on Friday 28th of February... was kind of sad to see the thing go after watching it come together over the past days. Still a very fun explosion and it did fly... I just really hope this doesn't throw back their schedule.

The corona virus has finally arrived in my neighborhood over the weekend. Good thing I have been buying a little extra imperishable food supplies every time I have gone shopping over the past few weeks because... now suddenly the shelves are empty as people start to stock up.

Started refining the fingernails and adjusting poly groups accordingly. The hands themselves still need a little work.