Kevin Olson

Samantha Lewis wrote:Hello James!

I am a professional trader.  I think you are right on with you assessment here.  

Trading crypto is an excellent market to learn.  It has volume and volatility.   Both important for the ability to make money trading.    

If anyone wants to learn more please chime in!  

There are a lot of traders here on permies and we can create some free education to help folks get started or take their trading to the next level.

Thanks for bringing this in!

Samantha -

I'd be interested to hear more about this.

Items of particular interest to me:
- What exchanges or other markets do you find to be reputable, and for which currencies?
- How do you hold your crypto (cold wallet, custodial, etc.)?  Does that affect the platforms you use?
- Do you take positions based on technical indicators or on fundamental research?  Short term or long term (i.e. hodl versus day trade)?
- What money/portfolio management practices have you found to be helpful to control risk and to reallocate gains?
- Do you diversify gains outside of the crypto markets as part of your strategy (i.e. ag land, hard currencies, or gold)?
- Have you been through sustained down markets?  If so, how has that informed/changed your strategies, if at all?
- I'd also be interested to know what options markets are available to help manage downside risk of shorter term positions.

As an outsider, crypto markets seem to be a bit of a Wild West, with lots of scammy and disreputable characters.  However, I find myself  resonating with the philosophical positions of many of the publicly vocal BTC maximalists.  I am an unsophisticated long term investor for my retirement account, but I also realize I am overexposed in US dollar denominated assets, and am considering what alternatives I have available to diversify.  I am not against a more short term strategy, but transaction costs might be an impediment to me at my risk level.

Thanks for any insights you can share about your crypto trading.

Kevin

Regarding the kudl (온돌), it appears to be the same as an ondol - a traditional Korean hypocaust or heated floor:

https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%98%A8%EB%8F%8C

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondol

The English language Wikipedia article (which can be reached by changing the Korean articles language to English), states that "ondol" (온돌) can be pronounced "gudeul" (구들), where the leading "g" is a "hard g", i.e. more or less a "k" sound.

From the article:
"...gudeul originated from guun-dol (Korean), which means "heated stone"".

Duncan Shannon wrote:My main roadblock is (perceived?) poor alignment with a diet focused on protein and fat than carbs.  We try and eat protein heavy - so it just doesn't feel like bread had much of a place in our marco targeted eating plan. Plenty of carbs in vegetables.  Would love to hear how other people include it in their diet especially if you track your macros.

This.

I am trying to follow a ketogenic diet, with low to very low carbohydrates, to address a particular health condition.  Fitting bread into this lifestyle choice isn't straightforward.

However, of late I have been adding in a few slow carbs, high in fiber and eaten with fats.  As such, I have been occasionally grinding fresh whole meal flour (hard red and/or white winter wheat) and making long fermented yeasted bread (at least 12 hours of fermentation time, but often more like 24 hours).  One impediment is that the dough's time to ripeness seems to be quite variable, even when using temperature and humidity controlled proofing box and weighed ingredients.  Baking in a pre-heated cast iron dutch oven has improved  the results, for me.

I'd like to try making a desem starter a la "Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book", but haven't yet tried it.  The major impediment to that is that it requires a purported 10 pounds (!) of freshly ground flour.  Ten pounds?  Really?  I mean, if you are feeding a large family, or baking for a communal neighborhood kitchen, that is probably reasonable.  But for two people, that seems rather excessive, especially given that I am far from an expert baker, and might not even be able to produce something that I'd feel comfortable giving away.

I'd also like to try a vollkorn rye, using sprouted rye, with very long fermentation times (up to 4 days seems to be within reason).

Previously, I had been frequently making white, slow fermented bread (using King Arthur Bread Flour), following the "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day" method.  This is a no-knead, batch made dough, which is then refrigerated before baking.  That process fit into my lifestyle, prior to my dietary changes, so I baked several times per week, a loaf or two at a time.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:I guess I will have to ask my husband for help with figuring out what size to make, I am horrible at math.

Lonnie, from the "Far North Bushcraft and Survival" YT channel has several tipi or pyramid style tent construction videos.  These are actually hot tents (i.e. tents with a sheet metal stove inside), but the geometry might still work for your purposes.  You could use 6mil poly drop cloths, or the heavier weight Dura-Skrim or Visqueen with fiber reinforcement, or woven, bonded green house cover plastic.  Something UV-stabilized would probably be best, given your strong sunlight.

Here's a recipe for a conical, tipi-style tent:


Note that this is not a "true tipi", in that it is a right circular cone without smoke flaps, whereas real tipis have an egg-shaped floor plan, smoke flaps, and a distinct tilt.  The book by the Laubin's (https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Tipi-Its-History-Construction/dp/0806122366) gives plans for true tipis, though I don't think those are likely necessary for your intended purpose.  The out-of-round floor plan and tilt of a true tipi are supposed to provide a better floor space layout and improved ventilation and better smoke draw (in combination with the smoke flaps).

Here's a pyramid style tent plan from Lonnie:


You could proportionally scale either of these to meet the required dimensions.

To be entirely transparent, I have no idea if a tipi or pyramid tent will work for your purposes - the wide temperature variation and the xeric conditions are challenging - but these videos give some simplified instructions for creating such tents.

Lonnie has lots of other good videos on camping and survival in the Alaskan bush, but that's all pretty far removed from your environment!

When I was a kid, my mother would dab on very strong (cooled!) black tea, using the tea bag to apply it: cheapest store brand was the order of the day.  My mother always applied it at room temperature, but chilled might be more soothing, yet.

Did it help?  I don't know, but we thought it did.  It felt better by far than Solarcaine spray!  I was very fair as a child, with a shock of very blond - nearly white - hair, and I freckled well, but didn't tan very much.  In fact, my mother would often insist that I was still dirty after my statutorily required baths, and re-scrub "grimy" spots, only to discover that the schmutz was well and truly attached to my hide, just an area with a bit of residual tanning!  Living at altitude in the Mountain West, I had lots of opportunity for minor sunburns, and the ensuing tea bag treatment.

I rarely get much of a sunburn these days.  My mother died of metastatic melanoma of the liver in her early 50s, some 30 years ago.  The medical community, and dermatologists in particular, have associated sun exposure and "skin cancer", but without much subtlety or distinction.  Consequently, I have assiduously avoided direct sun exposure for a long time.  Of late, I have come to realize that, while basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas are associated with sun exposure, the statistical correlation of melanomas with sun exposure is much weaker.  And, if caught early, basal and squamous cell cancers are rarely life threatening, though perhaps disfiguring.  High serum levels of Vitamin D seem to have a protective effect with respect to cancer, generally.

Though my thinking on sun exposure and skin cancer - and, indeed, the nature and cause of cancers, generally - has evolved in the last few years, I am still habituated to wearing hats, long sleeved shirts and trousers in the summer sun.  I do try to get controlled exposure to the sun to acquire some Vitamin D the old fashioned way, but still try to avoid getting a proper sunburn, so I haven't had opportunity to use the black tea method in many years.  Still, it is cheap, unlikely to hurt you, and just might help, so is probably worth a try.

Here's the style of shave horse I've been contemplating building:


Note the undercut pocket for the pivot, best seen at about 15 seconds and following.

I had built a crude shave horse about 10 years ago, using scrap lumber off cuts, but it was far from ideal, and got turned into other things as soon as the job was done (cleaning up and thinning down some riven cedar shingles so that they would lay a little flatter).

The above design combines some of the virtues of a low Roman style workbench with a shave horse.  Christopher Schwarz, principal of Lost Art Press, and author of (among other things) a book on workbenches for hand woodworking, advocates for the Roman style bench as a simple yet functional approach.  I've built a couple from slabs for my dad to use, but they didn't survive his hard use very well.  It's on my list to make a better one, which could double as a bench for sitting on our front porch when not in use as a workbench.

A digital version of Chris's book on workbenches can be downloaded directly from Lost Art Press, or you can purchase a print edition.  Chris's books are well bound and nicely printed - I have several, including Woodworking in Estonia.

Download link: https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/AWB_Consumer_June-2020_v5.1-1.pdf

If you are only interested in the Roman style benches, Chris had an earlier article/booklet just covering those, though the first link has some subsequent updates:
https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/roman-workbenches-1.pdf

For what it's worth.

Here's another mill build from a Virginian, very DIY, using some local field stone for the quern, and trimmings and drops from some trees in his yard milled up for the cabinet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8UyEbm3_gw

One thing which is quite evident in this video is that the two stones have the same "handed" grooves cut in them, and that the grooves are deepest near the center, and reduce in depth as they approach the periphery of the stones.  This was mentioned in the Australian video above, but is very visually obvious here.  Thus, when placed face-to-face, the grooves will direct the grains outward to the closer clearances (and finer grind), while shearing the grains.

The way he constructed this one, it could be converted to crank or treadle power fairly easily.

But, if your objective is solely to wet grind nixtamalized maize, this style won't likely serve you very well.

Here's an Asian mill, described as a noodle mill:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2lxXgpYv2Ws[/youtube]

I don't know much about this style of mill, though it clearly uses both a crushing and a sliding/shearing motion.  I wonder if something along these lines wouldn't work for grinding wet substances.

Or, this style, which I more typically associate with very old fashioned cider mills, when the track is in a full circle:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lTRe7p5-ezw

And a version of mano and metate, with a long, two-handed mano, from the Hadzabe of Tanzania:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KUesYUqMi6g

These all seem like they could be (dare I say) grist for the mill!

There are quite a few YouTube videos describing ways of making mills - rotary quern or elsewise.

Here's one from an Australian fellow, who pretty well built one from scratch - granite tiles, cut with an angle grinder held in a jig for the stones, with a wooden cabinet and an electric drive motor.



I'm not certain that I could exactly replicate his jig geometry from video and his description.

He shows a somewhat improved version, here:


JB of the "Good and Basic" YT channel made a concrete rotary quern:

He noted that the concrete wore away around the pieces of aggregate, which would probably lead to shortened teeth, and worse.  Probably not the recommended means, but interesting, nonetheless.

JB also discussed the relative merits of the mano and metate versus a rotary quern for wet processing nixtamalized corn in the Americas, and why rotary milling may not have really "caught on" in the Americas until Europeans began dry grinding cereals:


JB has lots of other fun stuff on his channel - everything from smelting bog iron to fiber arts experiments.

My first thoughts are for applications with similar mechanical behavior to the original dryer drum:

- supports for a rock tumbler drum

- supports for a porch column "lathe" (or for spars for small sail boats)

I imagine you've seen a rock tumbler before, so need for explanation is not likely warranted.  The porch columns (or booms/masts) I'm thinking of are built up from boards or staves, with one edge having a "bird's mouth" groove down the length to receive the squared edge of the next board.  Depending on the size of the column and the thickness of the boards, the initial glue-up might have upwards of 8 sides (with the bird's mouths oriented accordingly).  If making booms or masts, the boards can be tapered to yield a varying diameter "stick".  After edge gluing the hollow column, it can be turned round on the outside diameter.  A "cat head" at each end will be needed as a running surface for the dryer drum wheels, at least until some cylindrical "register" can be established on the OD of the column.

Here's an article on the Duck Works website on building up spars in this fashion, but without benefit of such a lathe as I have described:
https://www.duckworksmagazine.com/06/howto/birdsmouth/index.htm

The porch column lathe would be most helpful if making fluted or round antebellum, Greek or Roman columns.  And, totally superfluous for square section Craftsman style columns.  I know I saw an article some years ago (Maybe in Fine Homebuilding?  Pretty likely to have been some Taunton publication) on turning replica porch columns in this fashion, but I can't seem to lay hands on it (literally or metaphorically) at this moment.  If I find it. I'll add a reference on edit.

Neither of the above will use very many dryer rollers, though.

I can't imagine that these are rated for either high speed or high radial load (or for any combination of load multiplied by speed that would be a "high" value), so that probably limits their use a bogies for a homebrew version of Mattracks for your deuce-and-a-half (or garden tractor), for example.

Rollers for positioning your backyard celestial observatory's dome?

Still cogitating...

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Sometimes I find hand-cranked meat grinders at thrift shops for cheap. They are designed to make hamburger. I would speculate that these would break corn and beans into small chips, which could be finished into flour by methods noted above..

I have seen from several different sources online that a meat grinder will make tolerably good masa, if run though in two passes (coarser, then finer).  But, I don't know about making dry corn meal with a meat grinder - I surely haven't tried.

I also haven't tried making masa yet.  I need to get some cal (food grade calcium hydroxide/quick lime).  Or, I could use wood ashes, too, to nixtamalize the corn.  I have several 5 gallon buckets of "deer corn" in the basement, waiting.  It's probably GMO and other stuff, but as an experiment may be OK, and was cheaply acquired at the end of deer season from our local grocery store - just field commodity corn, nothing special.

I have a raft of hand cranked grinders which have followed me home from the local thrift stores.  I've given away quite a few, but still have a bunch of them.  The most common use so far has been to mash/grind chick peas for hummus (or what passes for it in our house - my wife objects to tahini, so ours is tahini-free).  The immersion blender we have isn't up to the initial maceration, though is does pretty well at incorporating the garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and so forth after the garbanzos are already pretty well mushy.  Anyway, I am pretty sure that making masa with a meat grinder would work, based on the chick pea experience, though it might take a bit of monkeying around to find the right sequence of grind plates.

I myself am debating what hand grinder to obtain for making wheat and rye flour.  Whatever I get, I want to be able to grind corn meal, as well.  A grinder with interchangeable steel burrs and stones would be ideal, so both wet/oily and dry things can be ground.  My current setup is a Messerschmidt Jupiter/Family Grain Mill steel burr mill.  I am quite confident that a hard corn would bee too much for it, since hard winter wheat feels like it is pushing the limits.  So far, a KitchenAid ready Mockmill (which could have a hand-crank drive made up) or a hand crank Retsel are near the top of my list, but I can't claim that I have exhaustively investigated all possibilities.