Introduction
The following odes are a collection from my posts.
I find with technical stuff, an ode can have a sort of efficiency of word usage that forces the writer to get to the point with the sparse use of words with a little fun. Some are not technical stuff, but are human issues that I think need more of an airing and a little cleansing sunlight on them. They may just have to wait for a post to accommodate them.
To get started, here is a little ode to an ode;
A simple rhyming verse is an ode,
An electrical theme do the words bode?
Next, a line of electrifying new double rhyme,
Last, a shocking rhyming word to make it anode.
They are grouped according to the post from which they were copied with a brief introduction to provide a tiny bit of context for the obtuse words. The group at the bottom have not yet found their post in which to rest.
At the head of each group of odes, a link to the post of origin is provided, so that you can look further if it should take your fancy. Please enjoy and apologies if some words are not quite PC.
An ode to the KISS Stove burner and the question of what type of burner it is;
Is it a tiny gas stove or just a fire?
Does wood burn in temperatures higher?
No, the wood just gets cooked if it’s understood,
It’s the gas that burns in a quasi gasifier.
An ode to inventors being free to change their investigative paths as the journey is revealed in front of us;
Freely followed paths long enough will merge,
If map or GPS directions one resists the urge,
Let times imagination decide the destination,
And go long enough the paths will again diverge.
An ode to a tent stove story truths, lessons and lies about my early tent stove disaster (that did not put me off);
Half the lies they tell are not true,
The melted tent pole was also the flue,
Wood burning tent stove or tent burning wood stove.
The humour and truth may be found by you.
An ode to another intelligent design with only two holes for simplicity (Where is this going………? );
A garden worm only has two significant holes,
They both fulfil quite different but essential roles,
One’s for poohs and the others for foods,
An intelligent separation of mouths from assholes.
An ode to the challenges of DIY tinkerers cutting holes in stainless steel (or titanium).
So, it’s just less than nothing, a missing sort of thing,
Made round in the shape of a ring,
But the cutting’s tough and leaves edges rough,
A great effort to make one’s in which all fittings swing.
This ode is about my ambitious but crappy sewing skills. I include it to encourage others to give it a try, as it is a wonderful skill even if the result is a bit ugly.
I searched for a noun for a male who crudely sews,
Not the obvious word sewer associated with poohs,
Meaning might twist if I correctly used sewist?
Or should I settle for a ‘crap-sewer’, who knows?
An ode to the competing claims of success of intelligent design or a smart operator.
Is it the stove design so simple, boring and elegant?
Or is it the operator so sharp, smart and intelligent?
To burn so well, hot as hell, with hardly a flue smell,
The answer’s in the room like the proverbial elephant.
Just to lighten up a little before we get to the spiral methodology, here is an ode to the concept of pulling or more correctly coaxing and restraining a spiral of feisty foil out from its energy-rich spring coil form without crinkle damage.
Could a transitional spiral just do the thing?
Control the conversion without noisy crinkling,
A smooth and sneaky flight of foil from its mortal coil?
Yes, if you arrest the unwinding of the spring.
Here is a little ode to your choice of holder of the wayward end of the ejecting spiral;
To hold the spiral could I use a thick split bush stick?
Or a winter trekking friend not quite so thick?
One’s possibly expedient, the other dumb and obedient.
If either let go then I’ll give them the flick.
A funny term is ‘baby formula’, so here is an ode that was just irresistible when describing a stove made from a baby formula tin can;
They tried for a baby with no luck,
Then saw a baby formula on a big truck,
I’m not faking, the next line your mistaken,
Alas, in bed, on the formula they were not struck.
An ode to the optimum width of a poor, neglected, forgotten and unseen flue pipe seam on a rollup flue pipe;
Should a flue pipe seam be wide or thin?
The definitive answer may lay hidden within?
If both worked well with no leak, nor smell,
For backpacking, one is cheaper, lighter, shorter, (not like my words), to fit in.
An ode to the wonders of DIY custom tools;
A good DIY tool is worth its weight in gold,
The work to wrought and safely hold,
Its short time to rend pays an endless dividend,
As friends, worth their weight in feathers when old.
I don’t have a photo of the mystery trace of release agent, so I offer an ode to lighten up the post a bit. It also discourages the use of spit as a culinary lubricant;
A search for a release agent for food fit,
Smeared invisibly on butyl rubber to sit,
A manufactured chemical or something natural?
Twill be born again extra virgin olive oil, not spit.
Once upon a time when this ‘cylindrical tube’ was very short, I called it a ‘ring’. It grew and grew and grew to a length of 200mm or more! So here is a little ode to Tolkienesque magic rings before I rename it a tube;
Could one stretched hot ring spare them all?
Coping curry atop that red glowing fireball.
One cheap device that we will sacrifice,
Could it save the rest from their untimely fall?
A little ode for those who love and appreciate wood stoves combustion and the Earth & Suns wonderful combined gift of truly renewable fire;
Is it a tiny gas stove or just a fire?
Does wood burn in temperatures higher?
No, it just cooks the wood if it’s understood,
It’s the gas that burns in a quasi gasifier.
An ode to lateral thinking about simple solutions;
What could connect a wooden leg to a red hot fire?
That is without catching the damn thing on fire,
Could it be titanium, or Tim use your cranium,
It could just be ubiquitous farm fencing wire.
An ode to oil as fuel and food:
Energy-rich oil on a freezing cold night,
For warmth should I eat it or would burning be right?
Heat by digestion or by combustion?
Both heat and doughnuts when the oil stove I light.
A little ode to Brian who generously shared his paper clay ideas with us:
Are you ready for all clay rules to be broken,
For a ‘kiwi-master-clay-wizard’ has spoken,
Bonding thick, moist, dry, solid or hollow, rules don’t follow,
All is smashed except for your ceramic precious bespoken.
A little ode to ceramic experiments with crab hole soil (Crayfish mounds.) and dunny paper (toilet tissue);
So ignorant, they said he did not know shitfromclay,
With dunny paper and soil went out to play,
Combining soil from crabholes with paper for assholes,
Would he make flame resistant paper clay?
Ohhh…..and a little bit more fun about the hoarding of dunny paper by silly Aussies as we shaped up to the Corona virus pandemic. This ceramic paper clay trick seems to work best with toilet tissue. So there should be plenty of new stuff so you don’t need to used second-hand paper.
That virus is coming quickly they say,
We’ll get a years dunny paper in just one day,
F*** the rest cause we are the best!
Make ceramic with excess paper and clay.
An ode to the colour challenged person:
What is this vague sense that many call red,
The range of colours is beautiful, it’s said,
Imaginations figments or real colour pigments,
Wavelengths and frequencies are just sensed in the head.
An ode to a primitive digital thermometer that you can really trust:
Digital thermometers on both hands did sit,
Alas, for only one temperature, were they fit,
For 100 C to display or absolutely 373 K,
Reached when steam from fingertip did spit.
I need to lighten up a bit, so here is an ode to the visually challenged, related to a blind friend who renovated his own house with a little help from me while he played colour pranks on me:
He renovated a room while totally blind,
Helped by someone who was colour-blind,
Each hammer stroke, a finger on nail would poke,
And his colour pranks, played on me, I did not mind.
Yes, and he skied, bush walked and canoed.
An ode to a multi-fuel stove:
In a blizzard, the stack of fuel sticks ran perilously low,
No camper would go forth for more sticks in the snow,
Could we all stay warm and outlast that storm?
Those chocolate bars, (butter, cheezels, cooking oil, old boots and crappy skis) might into the stove have to go.
An ode about bathing etiquette when sharing bathwater in the bush;
In the wilds, we share precious bath water you see,
Made hot with small fallen gifts from a tree,
With shared water, we thought that we oughta,
Resist the urge into the bathwater to pee.
Now for the ode to someone else’s bigger dream stove with fewer parts.
Say no to the dream of a bigger stove with fewer bits!
Small is compact so the backpack it fits,
Small for strong radiant heat and cooking your meat,
As for fewer parts, it just gives me the irrits.
An ode to an innovators tensions between dreaming of DIY success and putting the dream to the first test, to maybe just finding failure:
My plans easily hold my wondrous dreams of success,
Fear of failure by testing,,,,,, I delay,,,,,,,,,,,, I confess,
After reality is tested, after time invested,
A sensation? A lesson or just a little more mess?
An ode to the intrinsic weakness of single spot weld:
A lone spot weld nugget is intrinsically piss-weak,
Without good company so-as-to-speak,
Two welds make rotational stability and ends fragility,
And the strength found was what I did seek.
An ode to the triumph of an improved fuel stick lifter for a side feeding dome stove;
An engineering wonder I thought,
Twas better than one that was bought,
Just made from bent wire it still can inspire,
And it turned out much better than I sought.
Odes to the fit of a cones:
Fit a rigid crude circular hole around a compliant cone,
Their intimate fit stands alone,
If you stuff it in tight, the seal will be right,
No gaps, no leaks or reason to moan.
Fit a crude tube inside the same cone,
The tube will find its way home,
Shove it right, the fit will be tight,
You will barely hear a moan.
Make a round hole that is smooth but rude,
And a tube that is equally crude,
By stuffing them tight they will unite,
Via a cone, so no; flame, smoke or gas will exude.
Here is the last ode for a cone:
A truncated cone is one hermaphrodite,
Unlike snail, male and female in sight,
With mounting corrected and polarity respected,
The pleasurable union will stay creosote tight.
An ode to simple stodgy stove design to prevent reverse burning
Preventing draft reversal is not complex it’s true,
That is, stodgy products of combustion only up through the flue,
With only one gas path generally up from the hearth,
In a tent, it’s a smart strategy that’s not entirely new.
This little ode was added to an addendum to the post where I had declared the end of the road for the J-burner. It may sound a little triumphal but that is the feeling that can come from seizing victory from certain defeat.
With great heating potential, this stove was a farce,
Without reverse burning, it would be top of the class,
With J-burner reversal dissected then corrected,
The KISS Stoves performance is ready to safely kick-ass.
Odes to my thinking and writing process from my ABOUT ME PAGE;
They are just little gems each one so minimal,
Arriving, dreamlike as gifts subliminal,
Not planed or sought by rational thought,
Now to write them in an order logical.
They are vague nebulous dreams or ideas,
Until implemented, tested and shared with peers,
Through inciting thinking and writing,
Even then they may express like diarrhoeas.
This is the waiting room for unattached odes that don’t yet have a post of their own to rest in
These odes just came into my head and are mainly inspired by news items that compel me to exorcise the stupidity and hypocrisy of some my fellow humans.
This ode was my reaction to protest by some religious leaders about using cell lines grown from an aborted fetus to develop a Covid19 vaccine for mankind to possibly save millions of lives.
Oh…no…no… no…. vaccine from cell lines acquired,
Grown for years from electively aborted fetus expired,
Such loud pompous priestly piety to all our society,
Years of silence for surviving Rogered boys from the choir
An ode response to the new discovery of signs of life on Venus;
It is said that those sweet beings come from Venus,
Where the signature of life was found by some genius,
Not always be placid having breathed sulphuric acid,
Still better than those Mars beings that have a penis.
Tim
