Notes and links from 26 Aug

A few days ago I was mulling over using our garden geodesic dome as a rainwater collection conduit. Not because it’s a particularly practical idea (the house roof is just over there and has guttering already installed) but as a dumb fun exercise. Soon after Fi continued her slow emptying of junk in the attic and came down with a gazebo tent, albeit with no poles, which has been used to protect the camera obscura when it rained. On a whim I laid it out and measured it and the distance between the guy-rope hoops turned out to be exactly the same as the distance between three dome joints. Given a square was never going to perfectly match the corners of a decagon this was as good as it was going to get. Thunder storms have been forecast this week and today was the prelude. I hung the tent in the dome, cut a hole in the middle, weighed it down with a couple of crowbars and stuck a container underneath. And it worked! An hour of rain half-filled a 45 litre Samla box! Now, the trick is to…