Alfheimr Renaissance

Female complications, day 4

Beacons in the night.

The exercise bike have seen more or less constant use. 20 minutes is quite a long time and during a two hour stretch, practically only five have time to use it. There are some who obviously have training aches from the previous day, but that is to be expected. It has become a prestige to show that you can cycle all 20 minutes even if you keep a lower pace and many are far too untrained, but don't want to admit it, especially not when Jane beats them so massively. Cardio training is not really done here, although people move around a lot, walk and work. Hillevi holds the second place due to stubbornness and the training she still followed, I still have third followed by Alith. That there are two women at the top and only two male names on the highscore list, where my time is best, makes it embarrassing for many male guards. In a contest of leg strength and endurance, they are beaten by women and a sejdmann, and my 'achievement' during the Stag night have underlined my manliness, making Asbjörn's proclamation three months ago of my manliness, seem almost prophetic by some. I suspect some take comfort in classifying humans as just naturally better at using an exercise bike.

Amusingly, one woman on the high score list is one of Myrun's shieldmaidens, the one who is Siri's primarily protection, and thus has to run after and accompany Siri playing or going on adventures, and Siri seems to be more boyish in her games than girlish, but what do I know about the norms here? Siri is disappointed that she can barely use the exercise bike - she's a bit short and light - but Siri is delighted when I lower the resistance and she turns can cycle well on the lighter resistance, especially if she stands and cycles, and with persistence she last until the sand runs out. I fetch and mount an extra slate board, marked 'Children Highscore' and Siri is overjoyed to lead that highscore list. The fact that there are no other entries on it doesn't matter, because she is the first, just like Jane on the other list. Jane had fun teaching Siri to high five, and when something warrants a high five.

I want to have some quiet time, and playing chess with Alith is a good excuse. Alith tries to distract me and lose my strategy, by discretely telling me that she's looking forward to when all the guests have left and it's just us, so she once again can use the exercise bike while using her butt plug. Said with a dreamy face. She doesn't earn any Highscore's but she doesn't even bother to take the time, as she just likes how it feels. I don't get distracted, but Alith makes dumb mistakes during her next two moves, and realise that she distracted herself. She was probably too honest there.

There is so much talk and discussion happening, that this feast doesn't really feel that feast like. It's not what I expected, though I don't complain. But a week long feast is just too long. During the meal we mention that there will probably be small Academy workshop's during future Northmen Ting, where we will inform, show and teach about things that are too important, while easy enough for people to start using or doing, where we ask people try it and return next year with their experiences. Northmen Ting will have participants from all over the Kingdom, and though few of the poorest attend, the information will slowly spread to them as well, and the Northmen Ting are many Sejd women from all corners of the realm. We've already had good successes with silage as animal feed, especially for cows and pigs, so we will start spreading the silage information. Some region might have a bad harvest next year, so silage is simply too valuable to keep for ourselves. When it comes to silage, we can even bring a few silage barrels to the Northmen Ting and feed animals with it, so people can see that it works, and how it looks, smells and such.

I take another break from the feast, to gather my energy with peace and quiet. It's not easy being slightly introvert and getting hoarded by people. So I lie on the bed in my bedroom and think, with Ciara beside me and resting her head on my chest. The ship will get a 12V system with wind power charging, and we will test how sailings is with the same battery vessel we have, but filled with water, just to see if anything spills or leaks. Far better than having problems with acid. The small mini batteries should work best as they are tall and narrow. What is important is that the lead battery cells are really well sealed and protected if they are going to be on a ship rocking and stamping on the waves, and maybe I should make a different vessel design. There will be a well damped suspension and mounting, probably lower and more central in the hold where there is less motion. I need to try to seal the ceramic edges with clay, glue or other solutions. Damping mount helps, but maybe I can make the acid into a more viscous gel? An improved lead plate should help with battery capacity and current. After all, it's a matter of surface area, so I've thought about casting plates with a fine grid, much like a water cooler, or rolling out thin flat strips that are then attached together. Another solution might be some form of lead paste which can be made with lots of small cavities. In a way, it's a similar problem with activated charcoal filters. How do you make a certain volume have as much surface area as possible? A staggering amount of tiny holes. I'm thinking about using bubbles or some kind of chemical reaction to turn the lead spongelike.

Since the mansion's electrical system can charge tablets, mobile phones and so on via the buildings electrical network, a lot of battery equipment is no longer needed just for charging or powering stuff. I have planned to permanently mount my folding solar panel on the outside of the house and hooking it up to the batteries, but that won't contribute much, so it's better to save the solar panels for where they are really needed. I can modify and split the solar panels apart, and they are 18V solar panels. The radios work well on 12V and it could be nice to use the solar panel if we travel. Also, I need to do a major upgrade to the mansion's electrical system quite soon. I need higher capacity and higher voltage available for other projects.

So many projects and ideas.

I look at the bedside table clock. I'm pleased with how well the electrical time signals work. They make it so much easier to make something like a clock and the mechanical counter style clock works, but it bothers me that the clock is so thick and tall in relation to the size of the display. But hard to do anything about as the reason is the many facets on each display wheel, and it is 24 hours and 60 minutes. The problem is that tens of minutes should show 0-9, tens of minutes should show 0-5, hours should show 0-9, but every third cycle only go 0-3, and tens of hours need to show 0-2. The six different steps for 0-5 in tens of minutes so it is a wheel with 12 steps where 0-5 is repeated twice, and thus 12 steps become quite similar to the 10 step wheel for tens of minutes. Furthermore, a similar 12-step wheel can then also be used directly to show hours on a 12-hour clock, and AM-PM could have alternating positions on the facets of a further 12-step wheel. But I don't want to give Jane that satisfaction and I don't want to use such a watch myself, so the mechanism has a double width hours wheel with 00 to 11 and 12 to 23 written side by side and a shutter that blocks half the view. The first cycle shows 00 to 11, the second cycle shows 12 to 23. Doubling all the facets would have simply made the numbers half the size which would have been worse than this solution, and with a special wheel Jane can get a special 1 to 12 AM/PM watch. The faceted wheels make the clock housing tall and thick, but not very wide. The minute side have the electromagnet that advances the minute wheel, but the tens of minutes wheel and the hour wheel are simply connected and are successively advanced, so there are relatively few parts in the watch. The next version will be upgraded to make setting time way easier, using a latch that disconnect the hour-minute wheels from each other and the electro magnet, so they can be manually rotated to be set. To make the case more symmetrical in width and because the hour wheel makes one revolution in 12 hours, it is easy to add an alarm function where an extra alarm wheel on the side is rotated to when the alarm is to be triggered, and a buzzer starts sounding until the alarm is turned off. It will simply be a table clock with adjustable alarm, with an on-off button. The disadvantage of including an alarm function is that it makes the construction significantly more complicated and basically doubles the amount of parts. The over all design and presentation of the time also means that people need to learn to interpret a completely clock face with numbered wheels instead of analog hands. Fortunately I did add numbers on the grandfather style clocks, and several in my proximity can read both analog and digital numbers. Others will simply have to learn.

There will be a small batch of these table top clocks made, and probably half with the alarm function, because I want them. There will also be a batch of smaller timing signal analog table clocks with a 24 hour dial and hands, where the hands will be centered in each other as all future clocks should be. They will be a much simpler design without complicated faceted wheels and so on. They will work as alarm clocks in most rooms, because even that analog table clock model will have an alarm function. It feels like a good idea to make table clocks for most rooms, and I have planned for my sambos to get their own alarm clocks, and so will Caecilia and others.

Basically I'll let my sambos choose which model they want. Even the mechanical counter model has relatively few parts and the faceted wheels are made of wood. A 10 and 12 faceted bar can be made which is then split into several parts using a lathe, and markings burned or painted. I really want to give Jane a special clock that works correctly, but is annoying. Like going backwards, or just have irregular ticking.

As I talk with Asbjörn, Myrun and Asta, I bring up building lighthouses. I explain what a lighthouse is and show on maps what I have planned, how it will work and used for navigation. Both directly link this subject to yesterday's discussion of infrastructure and proper paved roads that connect cities and larger communities. Lighthouses do the same at sea. One to four lighthouses would be suitable for Myrun's areas, but Asbjörn really sees the use and how many spread out lighthouses can make a huge difference. There have been many shipwrecks in this region, where ships run aground or have navigation problems in the archipelago. Especially merchants from far away lands using deep hulled cogs. He is worried that some people living along the coast might try to destroy the lighthouses, because ships running aground are a nice bonus for people in certain areas. Either through salvage or just plundering the wreck, because who knows what really happened to a lost ship or its crew? But the lighthouse require a lighthouse keeper, and it is possible to protect the lighthouses fairly well, and an isolated location will need a dedicated keeper. After all, a more expensive and fairly tall stone towers makes sense in more exposed places and the design can be fortified and protected, and not just against the sea and weather. A lighthouse will also be a way to legally establish ownership because if the land is inhabited for a certain time, it is owned, and lighthouse keeping can be combined with offering tax relief or similar to those who have land where it is suitable, in return for the maintenance of the lighthouse. There should be a penalty for not tending the lighthouse, and 'forgetting' to light it in bad weather is dangerous and puts sailors and passengers lives at risk.

Myrun immediately decides to set up two lighthouses, one on a small mountainous island that lies some distance out to sea from the mouth of the bay where Skiringsalr is, and another that will be inside the harbour. If those turns out to work well, there could be two more, one in each direction along the coast as there are other scattered islands where ships have run aground. Asbjörn want to set up three lighthouses, but add one or two smaller 'alignment' lighthouses in each place so that it is easier to estimate direction and distance, for both entry and exit to Borgarsandr. It takes time to sail through the archipelago going in and out of Borgarsandr, and during winters there is precious few daylight hours. The lighthouses can 'extend' the day's sailing for both entry and exit depending on the wind, the ship and direction, which can almost double the amount of hours available in the middle of winter. Asbjörn loves the idea of making Borgarsandr a desirable trading destination for ships that have sailed around the Daes kingdom or comes from across the sea, at least during the dark half of the year, and Myrun instantly have similar thoughts about Skiringsalr, since that will be closer for ships coming from that direction. Both have also realised the value of building better roads that go from the inland and out to 'their' cities, and it doesn't have to be paved roads. Macadam will be an option. I already have a big need for different sized roads and thus different sized rocks and have been thinking about starting to build stone crushers that are either wind or water powered, because if there is one thing that Scandinavia has in abundance, it is stone, gravel and sand. Many scattered stone crushers and sandpits help build infrastructure in its vicinity, so for a larger road project over a vast distance, it should be a good idea to have temporary facilities that are moveable, to reduce transport distances. Some type of tracked steam engine earthmover with a dozer blade or backhoe or just to move cargo would have been useful too, eventually I hope to make one.

We talk more about the details of lighthouses, but both will build fortified towers on the outer islands. After all, the lighthouses have to withstand the weather and storms and manage without replenishing supplies for a long time. So I show my sketches of a couple of different standardised lighthouse installations, but most notably the main lighthouse with the stone tower. Standardisation is good, because it teach a lot of people what it is. I show a couple of variations on light installations and in the future I plan to give lighthouses 'light signatures' so that they flash with a certain pattern and thus can be more easily identified, and the light will be experienced as stronger. As long as the towers are prepared for that mechanism, it's easier to upgrade. I also want to test how far the lighthouses can be seen in different weather, because they won't be bright. Height is of course important, but if the light is too weak, height does not matter much. View distance is easy, since how far the horizon is can be calculated according to the formula; the root of the height in meters, times 3.6, to get the distance in kilometers. For example, the square root of 16 is 4, and 4 times 3.6 equals 14.4 kilometers. But of course waves and height of the observer on the ship must be taken into account.

We also discuss simpler optical telegraphs to be able to signal from islands to land or similar short distances, and use flags to and from ships, which appeals to Asbjörn a lot, and when I bring up the possibility of ship pilots, he starts thinking about building a port on the outermost island I think is Vinga, or its equivalent here. A small intermediate station if someone needs a safe harbour quickly due to weather or time, where the ship can then also pick up a pilot to guide the way in. A young man, and in this way more ships can benefit from safe navigation at a cheap price, and especially if they are a long way from here. After all, it's about knowing the archipelago, currents and grounds, and not just how the lighthouses should be used to navigate. The wheels are turning in both Asbjörn's and Myrun's heads to make their cities more attractive to sailors and merchant ships. Every increase in trade means more silver, prestige and power for them. Trade attracts trade, which attracts people and craftsmen. I bring up other navigation aids and what the Academy will teach to the first year navigators this summer.

I'm not surprised that Myrun, who owns many trading ships, would in the future like to see a network of lighthouses that sailors can use and sail through the night, and she begins to make calculations for costs, such as the amount of fuel the lamps draw, food and wages. It's about making trade more efficient as well, and maybe being able to cut down on the number of ships and crew, if each ship becomes more efficient and moves more cargo in a shorter time.

The weather is fine, so I take them on a tour and visit to the Millennium Eagle, and I show my the ship's compass, and how its small lantern enables the navigator to keep a heading all night, even if the stars cannot be seen. A simple hourglass like used with the exercise bike keep track of time sailing along a certain distance. With the help of lighthouse beacons to ascertain one's position even in the dark, good navigators will get fixed point references as they can sail from Borgarsandr to Skiringalr during both day and nights, and deliberately stay further from the coast and away from the dangers of the archipelago. Myrun is very interested, and Asbjörn has evidently not forgotten what I said about some knowledge being useful both to strengthen the kingdom and give it a more powerful military.