From a Guardian article written by George Galloway on being prevented from entering Canada:
More than half a century ago Paul Robeson, one of the greatest men who ever lived, was forbidden to enter Canada not by Ottawa but by Washington, which had taken away his passport. But he was still able to transfix a vast crowd of Vancouver’s mill hands and miners with a 17-minute telephone concert, culminating in a rendition of the Ballad of Joe Hill. Technology has moved on since then.
Original article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/21/george-galloway-canada
It is now March 19 and the 36 inch balloon/tablet combination is neutrally buoyant. Excellent. Last night (night of March 18) it was still stuck to the ceiling.
See attached video.
Another little experiment. I took a little button and wired it up to the arduino. Set a little timer on it so that it would only register button presses if there’s at least a 20 second pause between button presses. When the button is pressed and the timer says it is ok, a processing application sends email. The way my code is written it could be a signal from any number of sensors and could send to any number of email addresses. Pretty neat all round.
No picture of this one.
I bought a 36 inch diameter rubber balloon to test both its lifting power and its ability to hold helium under pressure. The problem with helium is that the molecules are so small they seep through most otherwise impermeable materials. I filled the balloon (by chance it was red) 4 days ago. I tied it to the most massive tablet I had. it lifted it! so I’m on the right track as far as volume of helium needed to lift the clay. The problem is that in the four days the balloon lost about half the helium. That rate of loss is too much for me to seriously consider using rubber balloons. The properly sealed mylar balloon I inflated about three weeks ago has only now lost about 1/4 of its helium. I have a number of 36 inch mylar balloons to pick up tomorrow.
Attached is a link to a video I shot today at the end of my test.