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The Acid Test
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2652
The jeweler was less than impressed with my diamonds. Took a look, another look through the loupe, tweezered a couple, thought they were topaz...
Tells me the thermal test (they passed) was only one, lots of stones would pass the thermal test, to be sure you needed to do the thermal and the electric, what I needed to do was immerse the stones in Hydrochloric acid, (Muriatic acid), or Hydrofluoric acid, those that didn't dissolve would be diamonds...
There's no getting hydrofluoric acid, but Muriatic Acid I picked up at Rona. Hydrofluoric acid, by the way, for those of you who watched Breaking Bad, while without a doubt the bad-ass of acids, is not quite what Walter White cracked it up to be. Yes, it'll eat through everything, but no, it's not as great as those cracked articles or TV shows would have you believe. No, it probably wouldn't have eaten through Jesse's Tub. The Muriatic acid, it cleans the stones, fizzes on the metal in the sink (there goes the damage deposit), dissolves a few pieces of limestone for the daughter's amusement, but in the end the stones are still there, Adamantine lustre and all...
While I have no doubt the jeweler was right, there's simply no easy 1-2-3 test to determine if I've found diamonds or not. The obvious diamonds, that demonstrate great crystal shape and form, those you can tell, their crystal structure, the double terminated pyramids, twinned crystals or cubes or Ballas diamonds, but these are the rare exceptions, and not the commonly found stones, and I'm back to square one, with all of the finding still ahead of me and no way to tell when I've arrived...
Forced Perspective on Nose Hill
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 1880
Lower the camera, cut out the city...
6 Hours of Car Alarm
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2871
It started at 3:00 AM, like a fucking crime wave hitting the neighborhood, honking, beeps, sirens, ambulance, one of those old school alarms that screams "rape" loud enough for the entire fucking city to hear, only letting up intermittently, finally, 7:00 AM and I've had enough, walk down the street and get a license plate. Already the truck is papered with notes from other light sleepers and well wishers in the area, another neighbor is there taking a plate, he thinks the truck is stolen and dumped, I'm not so sure...If the truck isn't stolen, license plate BNJ-6946, you are Calgary's "ASS HOLE OF THE DAY". This in a city that offers pretty stiff competition.
As for the police, well, Bankview is hardly central, and easily 7 blocks from the nearest Tim Hortons, how could they be expected to break up their Friday night over something as trivial as this? Mind you, if it were a crime spree and you were breaking into cars in the downtown core, expect a 6 hour head start before the cops pop out their earplugs...
Flea Circus
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2452
When I worked as a clown I had a bit I did for younger kids, "The Flea Circus", in which with a concealed pencil and sheet of plain white paper I'd try to persuade a group of suspicious 5 year-olds that there were indeed fleas doing all sorts of acrobatics and stunts. They were pretty skeptical, but with my free left hand hidden under the paper playing the role of "Escaped Flea", dispensing abundant pinches to the unbelievers, I managed to bring them all back into the fold...
Imagine my surprise when I found out there was actually such a thing!
Links: Wiki on the Flea Circus, http://flea-circus.com/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9BjN_GHIic, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQLPhS1N9pc
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