Building Batman

Taco Bell

2010-08-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

You might have already seen this but just in case you haven't, here it is:

Take THAT, Kevin Smith

2010-08-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

I have nothing to say about this except that you might find Let's Be Friends Again a funny webcomic.

Under the Red Hood

2010-08-01T10:58:00.001-07:00

Has nobody seen "Under the Red Hood" yet? I've read all of two reviews. One over at Comics, Films, Kung Fu, and Whatever the Hell Else and the other at The Daily P.O.P. Both reviews were very positive which parallels my feelings.

The only bit of review worth doing I think is to disagree with them about is Bruce Greenwood. We all know Kevin Conroy is great. But I think Greenwood did a superb job. Although I have admit it wasn't this actor who convinced me that Batman didn't need to be played by Conroy: It was William Baldwin's version from "Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths". Man, was he amazing.

The other thing worth noting is that while the bulk of the movie maybe good but not brilliant, the climax scene is simply outstanding.

Becoming Batman

2010-07-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I suppose it was inevitable but they've done it. Someone has finally made a TV show about my mission. Yup...

...OK so it's on YouTube not TV.

...OK so it's not about me but it is about someone becoming Batman... Just like me.
And it does mirror my life exactly.

...OK maybe not exactly... maybe...

Just watch it, already!

Triathlon

2010-07-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

I've have a new goal:
One September 19th I'll run a triathlon to demonstrate to myself that this summer's physical training should be considered a success.
I always thought triathlons were longer but I'll be
Swimming 500 m
Cycling 26 km
Running 5 km

This makes it a "sprint"-triathlon. I'd rather try an "olympic"-triathlon of
Swimming 1.5 km
Cycling 40 km
Running 10 km
but this Triathlon doesn't have that as an option.

A blog after my own heart

2010-07-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

Now that's what I'm talking about! Remember when I used to do superhero-related Fermi Problems? Well check out this out: there's this blog called Polite Dissent and last month he asked a Fermi problem: Could Superman cure cance?
I loved the post and I'm sure you will too.

Oh bother

2010-07-12T15:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went buildering for the first time. What a disaster.

I shimmied-up a couple of floors between two buildings with a narrow alley between them and made it to the roof. But not without some trouble, mind you. The problem? My shoes for sure. I decided that the best footwear would be my old wrestling shoes. I thought that my wall climbing shoes wouldn't be good because I couldn't walk to the site I choice for my virgin climb. Plus in climbing shoes I couldn't run off or jump down if I needed to. So I chose my wrestling shoes as the next best thing since they are close-fitting like climbing shoes. Not a good choice.

The soles are all wrong. Climbing shoes are smooth but rubbery. Wrestling shoes are smooth but nearly as soft. Any time I took pressure off my hands, my feet would slip. Not fun. With all that slipping you'd better believe that I wasn't silent as a ninja. Not a chance.

I think even runners would have been a better choice. If you have any ideas about better footwear leave a comment because I don't have a clue.

Bat-radia

2010-07-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing that is often missing from the commonly shown contents of Batman's utility belt:

A simple police scanner!

Now I suppose in the high-techie sort of portrail of Batman there is probably a nano-scanner or some such thing built in his mantel. And of course, he is often shown with a high-tech communications system for communicating with his allies.

But a low scale, independent Batman doesn't need those things. What he needs is a handheld scanner radio. In fact, there's a pretty good argument why Batman would go low-tech for this kind of thing: If it's just a reciever and not an emitter no one should be able to track him. Scanners are completely passive.

So what is a scanner radio? A scanner is a radio receiver that scans multiple frequencies looking for transmitions.

The idea is simple but some of the details can get confusing unless they are explained chronologically rather than as they come up. Back in the 1930s people like the police would broadcast through AM radio stations so that anyone with a radio could hear. In order to have their own channel, they would change to a less public frequency. Of course, then and now anybody could just follow them and keep listening as long as they could tune into that channel. Each channel required a specific quartz-crystal which so that your radio could tune in. So the crystal almost acted like a key.

It wasn't until the 1970s that programmable scanner radios allowed you to type in any frequency (in the scanner's range) and listen in.

It turned out that some channels tended to get way more traffic than others. Just imagine say an taxi company. Each of the cars maybe has its own car-to-car channel with every other car. Most of the time these aren't being used. But imagine being the dispatcher. Every car is calling the dispatcher all the time! The dispatcher's channel is busy!

So to alleviate this all the frequencies are pooled together and a “site controller” gives each channel to a frequency. Then after a while he rotates them. The scanner radios then automatically follow because hidden in the transmittion you are currently listening to is the next frequency that the channel will be using. This is all called trunking. A trunk tracker scanner radio can follow this automatically.

Of course, today even radio communication of this sort is heavily digital but we won't go there.

For more information you need to check out:
Police Scanner Info
HAM Universe
Radio Scanner Guide

Batman Training 10,000 Hours per Ability

2010-06-29T18:42:00.000-07:00

In the comments to This War Continues a couple of us have been talking about what it takes to be an expert. I had recently read that it takes three hours per day of training to become an expert.

Those three hours per day are actually an estimate on the number of hours per day to become an expert in approximately ten years. As mentioned by M.C. Elroy, it's actually based on the 10000-Hours-Rule. The 10000-Hours-Rule is a claim made popular in the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell (make sure to watch the three videos found on the side bar) that 10,000 hours of delibriate practice are required to become an elite expert at any given thing. The idea itself comes out of the work of Anders Ericsson who did studies of what he called elite performance or expertise.

Ericsson lists three very broad ingredients that are need to produce an expert:

1)Measure - Lord Kelvin once said, “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”

2) Deliberate Practice - Practice does not make perfect. Repeating what you already know how to do does not help make you an expert. Focused effort to do something you don't do well or can't do at all (called deliberate practice) is the key. 10,000 hours of this and you're on your way.

3) Finding Coaches and Mentors – The best coaches know skills will need improvement at the next level not just your current level and so can help tremendously to ensure deliberate practice.

Batman is currently the 14th most powerful comic character according to ComicVine's Rank Game. He is ranks first in Unarmed Combat, Escape Artist, Tracking, Gadgets and Stealth. Plus he ranks 4th in Weapon Mastery and Marksmanship. According to the 10,000-Hours-Rule, to be an expert in all those requires 70,000 hours or 21 hours per day for 10 years straight of dedicated practice.

This War Continues

2010-06-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

Eight weeks of boxing courses end tonight. This is the session and then there is a three week break.

All and all, it's been pretty intense. I never imagined that I would be able to skip-rope so well. In fact, if I had to point to the most important improvement to my self-defense skills it would be the vast improvement in balance. Boxers have good balance and I feel that I've picked-up some of that.

The other two major improvements are simply:

(1) practice hitting something solid. In Jui-Jitsu when we point-fight, part of the exercise is having the self-control to never make contact with your opponent. So I've really appreciated the experiance with true contact and how that effects your next move.

(2) endurance. Boxing classes have been exhausting and I'm not exactly out of shape anymore. One of the best results of BuildingBatman is that I've been in the best shape of my life for nearly two years and counting. Since the begin of the summer season I have been rotating running, biking and swimming on top of boxing class. I have loose plans to compete in a TriAthlon this year. We'll see about that but it's all because of this blog.

So there's a three week break and then I repeat the eight week course.

Up next: A review of police scanners.

This Will Have to Hold You Over

2010-05-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

As the late hour of this post may indicate to you, free-time has been hard to come by. This beautiful picture by Eiko Chan will have to hold you over until I can share with you some of the interesting things I've been learning about computers lately.

Boxing Batmen, Batman

2010-05-10T20:13:00.001-07:00

I forgot to tell you how boxing went on Friday: It couldn't have gone better. Unlike Jiu Jitsu it is a really organized program. They have a system and they follow it.
It goes as follows:
1) Stretches
2) For 45 min do a circuit consisting of
-skipping
-skipping
-speed bag
-heavy bag
-heavy bag
-speed bag
-skipping
-skipping
-shadow boxing
-heavy bag
-heavy bag
And repeat. You spend 2min at each before moving to the next.
Before finishing, we did something the coach called a punch-out. He broke us into small groups and had go hard on the bags (still focusing on stance but not stepping in and out just continual strikes).

It made for a tough workout.

And In This Corner... the Batman

2010-05-04T20:13:00.000-07:00

I just got back from my last Jiu Jitsu session of the season. The community dojo that I attend shuts down over most of the summer. All and all, I'd say it was a great experience. I attended a handful of competitions, went to classes weekly and was awarded my orange belt. Although the goal of this blog is to introduce me to (and not master) all the skills and abilities that Bruce Wayne would need before becoming the Batman, I think that I will continue with Jiu Jitsu next fall.

In the mean time, starting next Friday I will be attending a local gym for a training course in boxing. I hear that it's pretty intense and I hope to get alot out of it.
PS Anybody who wants to consider themselves learned about Batman's martial arts training must read the series of posts on the subject over at Comics, Films, Kung Fu, and Whatever the Hell Else:
Intro
Boxing
Jujitsu
Savate
Eskrima, Kali and Arnis
Capoeira
Kung Fu
Wing Chun
Mok Gar
Northern Shaolin
Tien Hsueh

Iron Man I: How It Should Have Ended

2010-05-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm on a little bit of a video kick: HowItShouldHaveEnded recently did an Iron Man Spoof:

If you haven't seen these then you should watch the Superman one and the Spider-man one to get the running gag of Superman and Batman in a diner.

SMBC Theater vs Batman

2010-05-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is a humor I really enjoy and they do videos and sometimes the videos make fun of Batman:

and they do Superman in the same schtick:

Eiko Chan

2010-03-20T22:30:00.000-07:00

I'm loving Eiko Chan's work and I just had to share it with you - all of it. If you ever meet her, tell her I love her, won't you? And if you ever run into DC comics tell them that if they ever hired Eiko Chan to do Batman, I'd buy those comics for any large sum of money they decide to charge me.
Eiko Chan tumblr
Eiko Chan on deviantART
Eiko Chan on Blogspot

My Name's Not Actually Bruce - clever, no?

2010-03-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

In my last post I told you about the book Disguise Techniques. Today I summarize it for you.

The rest of the first chapter (after the not so good stuff I mentioned in my last post) is a good discussion of how people’s stereotypes can be useful to disguise artists. Absolutely in separable from this is the idea of context. The concept of context forms an important part of this book: “If your disguise fits a common stereotype that is substantially different from the image you normally project, you are not likely to be recognized later in your ‘real-life’ role,” the book says. It’s a good point.

The second chapter is about preparation and has as much to do with seeing others and seeing yourself as it does with not letting others see your true self. After second (this one is the last) fake sounding story about ninja practices, the book talks about getting over your own stereotypes and seeing people and remember very specific details. The exercises he suggests throughout this chapter sound very valuable to someone trying to emulate the world’s greatest detective and throughout the next month I am determined to practice some of them. I’ll introduce as they come up in later posts. After practising to see others, the book then says you should apply this to yourself. Identify your own stereotype. Only once you know what kind of person you project to others can you make alterations to that projection.

Next he talks about disguises. The perfect disguise has 4 properties:
1)It covers up your individual features making you generic
2)The disguise itself is also generic and made of common stuff
3)It’s easy to put on and take off
4)It’s easy to dispose of.

Beyond those points the main points of this third chapter can be summarized pretty clearly:
The most important things to disguise are your head and face BUT not to obscure your face. People are distrustful of masks and if you do not have a face (remember faces do so much of our unverbal communication) you will draw attention to yourself causing people to actively search your person for other identifiers (which is something you don’t want if you are trying to be disguised). He does have a couple of neat exceptions to this rule. Keeping in mind Batman read this paragraph:
“The second point is that the fear reaction to a cover-up disguise may at times be used to the disguise artist’s advantage. Medieval Japanese samurai armor often included headgear with terrifying iron masks, complete with exaggerated scowls, teeth, and long mustaches. Even when viewed in the calm of a museum, samurai armor is somewhat unsettling. Worn on the battlefield by sword-wielding, screaming horsemen, it threw opposing troops into confusion and disarray. The same principle operates with the simpler cover-ups. Observers typically feel frightened and confused when they perceive themselves threatened by a masked stranger, and this reaction can but the disguise artist some time in which to conclude his operation and get out of the vicinity.”
Now if that doesn’t sound like Bruce Wayne donning a cape and cowl, I don’t know what does.
The author finishes the chapter with a couple quick ideas about temporarily disguising cars and rooms.

The next chapter is basically about acting. There’s a couple of important points here. Firstly, don’t try to pass yourself off as a member of any group that you are trying to infiltrate. There are just too many details and subtleties to trip you up. Instead be as different as possible and rely on their stereotypes to help your disguise. Secondly, learn to be quiet. It is an amateur mistake to give lots of made-up background. Don’t babble. Shut up. Be confident in your disguise. People don’t generally care about you and if they are asking it is probably just polite and they won’t expect concrete responses so don’t give them concrete response. The book quotes President Coolidge as saying, “If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called upon to repeat it,” and also, “I never got in trouble for anything I didn’t say.” But this has to be done with tact because if you only ask questions and never reveal anything about yourself (i.e. the character you are disguised as) then people will feel like you are interrogating them and grow distrustful. The solution: learn to flimflam. Small talk is super easy, and so is saying words without any meaning. All it takes is a little practice.

The penultimate chapter deals with makeup. Now I think that it is more than a little dated but you have to remember that the book is written by a man presumably talking to other men about makeup in the early 80s so you’ll have to excuse the fact that he is explicit about everything. To me the important things were 1) NEVER use stage makeup which is a definite common mistake amongst amateur men 2) blemish cover works fairly well to downplay beard shadow 3) with A LOT of work even ridiculous disguises can be pulled off with makeup and good acting. The book does have a section on using makeup to change the shape of your face but I have to reread it.

So that’s the book in a nutshell (it turned into a lengthy synopsis, oh well). Over the next little while, I’ll implement a practice routine for some of the exercises the book recommended and tell you how they go.

Disguise Technigues by Edmond MacInaugh

2010-03-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

Where’ve I been?!?!?!

It seems like forever ago that I last posted. What have I been doing for a week?

Reading up on disguise techniques, that’s what. Since my last post I’ve read through a short book called “Disguise Techniques-Fool All of the People Some of the Time” by Ed MacInaugh. It’s actually a great book and I would recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in disguises. I was really worried for awhile that I wouldn’t find useful information on the topic but this book was a great introduction and I’d like to recap it for you.

The book is made up of 5 chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter talks about the psychology needed to become invisible, the second chapter (definitely my favorite chapter) preps you for taking up a disguise, the third talks about disguises, the fourth about acting and the fifth about makeup. Please I beg you, if you ever pickup this book, make it through the terrible Introduction and the start of the first chapter. The Introduction centers around a useless cartoon picture about stereotypes and the first chapter starts off with a bunch of hokey sounding stuff like “Not-being is a state of mind. It could be described as the antithesis of ‘be here now.’ You have probably practiced not being…” But it does get better (after the terribly painful paragraph about Ninja training and an intuitive sense of scrutiny).

Tomorrow I'll post a synopsis of the chapters.

How Batman is like canadian cross-dressing civil war spies with malaria and other interesting things

2010-03-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to practice the art of disguise. Surprisingly, enough the Wiki StealThisWiki (purporting to be an collaborative continuation of Steal This Book [online version]) has some not so terrible (although pretty trite mostly) advise. Other that that the internet seems unexpectedly bare. I really hope that this is because webpages on disguise are hidden well and not because they're not there at all. I have found a couple of books that I am currently reading and will summarize for you later.

In the mean time, let me introduce you to another person who is famous for being masters of disguise:

Emma Edmonds - Edmonds was born 150 years ago in 1841. When her father tried to force her to marry against her will, she left home. Worrying that her Canadian father would find her, she fled to the United States. And what does a woman in 1841 do in the United States? She enlists to fight in the Civil War as Mr. Franklin Flint Thompson. Apparently, physical examinations weren't common and so she was able to disguise herself as a man. Apparently, she is one of approximately 400 women to sucessfully enlist in the army during the Civil War.

Not only was Emma able to pretend to be Frank for several years in the army, Frank eventually became a spy for the Union. For her first mission to the Confederate front she disguised her white-self as a a black man whom she named Cuff. Shaving her head and donning a wig and coloring her skin by using silver nitrate. In this disguise (which was apparently good enough to fool her superior, she was able to spend two days on the Confederate side, long enough to gain important information about the Confederates.

About two months later, Emma disguised as Frank disguised as a fat Irish peddler woman crossed the enemy line again to sell apples and soap and steal secrets. Apparently, she had some sort of adventure getting back to the Union army since she had to steal a horse and was wounded in her escape.

Emma continued to use Cuff as her disguise but also developed a black mammy laundress. Once while cleaning an officer's coat, she found a bundle of official documents in one of the pockets full of important information. She was also involved in setting up a spy network in Louisville disguised as southerner Charles Mayberry.

She was able to continue with her amazing disguises until she caught malaria. As long as she wanted to keep her secret identy, she could not admit her alias Frank to the hospital. So she left camp and her alias behind and checked herself into a private hospital. Unfortunately, this made her a deserter. Her life as a professional spy was done.

She wrote memoirs and eventually admitted that Emma Edmonds and Frank Thompson were one and the same. She fought for (and eventually won) an honorable discharge (as Emma) and got her veteran's pension through a special act of Congress. What a crazy life. Amazing. Most of this information is from Wikipedia or civilwarhome.com

Masked Avenger

2010-02-28T13:37:00.000-08:00

Before the film premiered, I devoured the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories written by Doyle for the magazine, The Strand. Pulp like that makes me really happy (as is probably self evident by the fact that I have a blog dedicated to exploring Batman). Now, I'm no English major but I've been told that Sherlock Holmes stories aren't technically included in the mystery genre since the reader has no chance of solving the crime before Holmes does. Rather the stories should be included in Detective fiction. While I read them, I didn't really have much of a problem suspending my disbelief when it came to his intelligence and his inconcievable leaps in deductive reasoning (now refered to as Holmesian deduction). But one thing did catch me everytime: I was continually doubtful about the success of his disguises. The stories have him dressing up for days on end with not even Watson able to see past his act.

Batman (as one of the direct literary descendants of Sherlock Holmes) is often presented as a master of disguise. His aliase Matches Malone is often used but he is often portrayed as able to disguise himself as anyone.

But it seems ridiculous that the most famous man in Gotham can become completely unrecognizible by putting on some makeup and faking a limp.

So I started thinking, “Can this really be done?” I'm not talking about someone changing their look (like Evan Ratliff did for his Wired article). I mean someone taking on a bunch of secret identies to move secretly in and out of a small community of people (criminals in Batman's case) who would most likely recognize him in a heart beat.

I found the most pristine example of this working! I couldn't believe it. Ruth Reichl was once the Restaurant Critic for The New York Times. As such, she was determined not to receive special treatment while reviewing. But she soon realized just how important her reviews were to restaurant owners. She learned that kitchens had pictures of her and owners offered huge rewards to employees who recognized her.

Her solution? Secret identies.

You really have to listen to this interview I found. She starts talking about her disguises after the first half. It is really quite amazing.

I've spent quite a bit of time trying to find more examples of real-life masters of disguise but have only found a few (who I'll present to you in my next post) and only a couple of resources on learning how to properly disguise oneself.

What's the Point?

2010-02-07T09:28:00.000-08:00

Every once in awhile I like to take a post and restate my purpose with this blog. Although I will post about Batman comics or Batman TV shows from time to time, this isn't really supposed to be a general blog about Batman. I am trying to introduce myself to as many of Batman's skills and abilities as I can. Notice it is not my intent to master any of these skills but just to try them out.

So far I've got my yellow belt in Jui Jutsu, learned to make homemade smoke bombs, tried my hand at archery, read a book on forensic science, learned to make very good, very quick estimates from very little information (These are called Fermi Problems. We estimated fun comic-book things like how much energy Mr. Freeze gets from diamonds, how much food and how much oxygen the Flash needs, how strong Spider-man must be to stop an out-of-control train, how much stronger Superman must be to catch it if it came off the tracks, how heavy is Dark Claw with his adamantium skeleton, how much Kryptonite is on Earth, what was the mass of Krypton, how many buses are in Gotham City), I started bouldering and wall climbing when ever I get the chance, I tried my hand at picking locks, I did personal experiments with sleep deprivation and caffination, I now know a variety of knots and I bought and started throwing boomerangs (so cool).

This mission takes a lot of time. It can also prove expensive from time to time so I don't post often but I try my best. I'm always looking for suggestions on what I should learn next. I put off starting martial arts training until reads convinced me that it was absolutely essential. So feel free to leave suggestions at any time.

You should also try reading some of the blogs linked-to in the right hand column. I recommend them all (that's why they are there).

Batman's the Best Martial Artist Ever

2010-02-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

I fought in my first Martial Arts Tournament yesterday.

I don't know if you've ever been to one of these but they're interesting. That being said I'm not sure how useful they are. I spent alot of the day sitting around and very little of it actually competing. This one was multidisciplinary. I entered in grappling, self-defence and point-fighting.

I was easily beaten in grappling. I definately need to work on this.

I scored well in self-defence and placed high in my tier.

I like point fighting but their wasn't enough low level belts registered in my category and so all the color belts were mixed together. I fought an orange belt from a karate school whom I'm certain considered me an easy victory.

For it being my first tournament I was fairly pleased but like I said, I'm interested in learning not competing and this particular tournament didn't present many opertunities to learn.

Smoke Bomb

2010-01-20T17:52:00.000-08:00

Results:
1) The simple saltpeter/sugar recipe worked well. A significant amount of smoke was produced along with a surprisingly large flame. These smoke bombs are definitely not for indoor use. Batman would have to find another type of smoke bomb if he didn't want to ruin peoples' floors. My only complaint is that the homemade fuse sucks. When making a homemade smoke bomb, buy a fuse: don't attempt to make one. I'd suggest maybe a birthday cake sparkler. That probably would have worked quite well.

2) The recipe which added a touch of honey (or cornstarch) to the recipe was far easier to prepare. When it was lit, it behaved very similar to the first recipe (perhaps this smoke bomb burns slightly quicker).

3) The recipe that mixed the saltpeter and sugar into melted paraffin (wax) was a complete dud. I couldn't get it to light at all. Nothing. I suspect that I added far too much wax. If I were to try this again, I would follow one of the other two recipes and then just at a touch of paraffin, just so that it burned slightly slower.

So all in all, these worked surprisingly well. I would suspect that the remains of such a smoke bomb would leave virtually no clues about the user and so I suspect that Batman might actually prefer such simple homemade smoke bombs to more complex (and therefore more easily traceable) smoke grenades.

Batman Builds a Bomb

2010-01-17T21:40:00.000-08:00

I'll be doing three different methods: 1 will be what seems to be pretty standard and the other two are variations on it. I have purchased 125g of saltpeter (potassium itnrate - KNO₃) and the rest of the stuff can be found around the house. Saltpeter is not actually hard to find. It is used in recipes to salt meats, I guess. But that doesn't mean you will find it at a grocery store. I found some at a pharmacy. Just go up to the counter and ask the pharmist (not the store employee, the pharmist). I probably payed too much ($8) for my 125g but it should be fairly cheap.

Method 1:
So I gather everything that I need for this first method:
125g KNO₃
sugar
old pan
tin foil
paper towel
matches

I poured my self a glass of wine and begin. I don't have a scale because I'm not a drug dealer so I equally divide the saltpeter by volume. I also am doing this indoors because it's winter despite people's warnings.

I pour the 125g into a measuring cup and find it to be 100ml. Therefore the density is about 1.25g/cm³ according to me and that's much different than the value 2.109 g/cm³ given by Wikipedia which probably indicates that it's not very pure potassium nitrate. I don't know what else would be in it but it's worth noting. I split the 100ml into 3 containers.

Next mix in the sugar. There's really a discrepency on the internet. Mostly I read that it's 6 parts saltpeter to 4 parts sugar. But "parts" I always take to mean volume however everyonce and a while I run into people saying things like 60g of saltpeter to 40g of sugar. Now if Wikipedia is wrong and saltpeter isn't 2.109 g/cm³ but is closer to my 1.25g/cm³ and sugar has a density of about 0.7g/cm³ then they are about the same and it doesn't make a difference so I'm going to go with volume.

So that means I need approximately 60ml of sugar (just over 1/4 cup). (People online say not to do more than about 100g per batch since it gets harder and harder to heat evenly.)

So I mix the two together.

As a side note, I'm making the poor man's fuse. So I take some of the saltpeter/sugar mixture and add a touch of warm water, stirring until it's a smooth slurry. Then I throw a bit of paper towel in, take it out and wrap a match in it. Set it aside and let it dry. Tada, the worst fuse ever.

Now I can heat up the saltpeter/sugar mixture. I don't have an old frying pan. I just have 1 frying pan. So I turn the stove on to a very low temperature and put a disposable tin-pie-plate on top of my frying pan which I realize is going to give me less homogeneous heat but I like my frying pan. So that's just the way it's going to be. This is a worry because the sugar is going to carmalize and create a thick mixture which would harden and ruin my one and only frying pan.

So I set the stove on the very lowest temperature and continuously stirred but oh my goodness! When people on the internet tell you this has to be on the very lowest temperature, they mean low like they are talking to 10 year boys who are making smoke bombs (which they probably are) but it isn't really a low temperature. I had to turn it up a bunch of times. For any reasonable person with any experience cooking, this is just a regular low, a low medium.

After about a half hour some yellow started to show. Perhaps the problem was that I was stirring too much. None of the websites said to actually stir it but they said it needed to be evenly heated so I thought it would be a good idea. Only when I didn't stir would parts of the mixture start to brown. Stir perhaps but don't stir continuously.

It really does turn into carmelized mixture. You should be able to get a pretty smooth mixture. Mine didn't start to smoke but it was just beginning to give off fumes.

I took my mixture and split them into 2 smoke bombs by pouring the mixture onto a piece of tinfoil, sticking my homemade fuse into it and then using the tinfoil to wrap it up into a ball. And now they are cooling.

Method 2:
125g KNO₃
sugar
old pan
tin foil
paper towel
matches
honey

For the second mixture, all the steps are the same but I added a little honey as a liquid fuel. You could alternatively use cornstarch, apparently.
Everything else is the same. Except it seemed to go much faster. Whether that was because it was already at a higher heat or if the honey speeds the process, I don't know.

Method 3:
125g KNO₃
sugar
old pan
tin foil
paper towel
matches
wax

This method was only found at one place and the guy said it was his own creation so we'll see. For this method, I take two tea lights and I melt them down in the tinplate(actually I melted one and thought it wasn't enough so I melted half of another - so 1 and 1/2 tea lights). Once they were melted, I slowly pour in the saltpeter/sugar mixture and stir it till it's smooth. Pour into tinfoil and add fuse. Done. No carmalizing. I'm worried about these holding together. They're a little bit flakey and not as hard as the others.

And that's our science experiment for the day. Join me tomorrow when I light them and grade the recipes.

Building Batman Builds Smoke Bombs

2010-01-17T12:03:00.000-08:00

You're in for a treat.

Tonight the fine people who bring you Building Batman will be attempting to produce homemade smoke bombs. I have the materials, the will and the know-how. What could possibly go wrong?

Now That's Television

2010-01-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

Am I the only one watching this or what‽ The last four episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold have been prodigious. Plastic Man for an entire episode, the Challengers of the Unknown getting nailed by a bunch of Starros, a war against the Green Lanterns, Aquaman on vacation with his family AND NOW Detective Chimp and a super entertaining episode with the JSA. And before those we even had a great portrayal of Captain Marvel. This has got to be the best thing on television right now.

And that's right. I did just used an interrobang, baby.

He has a sidekick named after Robin Hood, of course Batman is an archer

2010-01-11T22:16:00.000-08:00

A family member of mine had the chance to teach me to shoot a bow and arrow the other day. Once upon a time, he must have been really quite good at it. It was really cool to learn from him.

Would Batman learn archery? I realize that there might be two potential camps on the question. One group would say that modern bows are leathal weapons that the Batman would never utilize in his war on crime and therefore since they are not potential tools would not bother to master. The other group would say that Batman strives to be an expert in all matters that might arise and archery (and firearms for that matter) are no exception. He would train in their use so that he would never be caught without the proper skills needed to solve a problem.

For this blog, I tend to side with the latter opinion.

We started with Robin Hood style tension bows (called a recurve bow). They were made of fibre glass or something but otherwise were exactly like what a merry archer would have used 600 years ago. We then moved on to compound bows. These are modern weapons engineered to be as light as possible and yet give the most kinetic energy possible to the arrow. Deadly weapons.

The obvious:
When you shoot an arrow you stand with your feet perpendicular to the direction you are aiming. If you are right handed, you hold the bow in your left hand and you keep your arm perfectly straight (your arm and your shoulders should form one staight line). You pull on the string with your index finger and your middle finger. Because the string should be hard to draw (pull back), you point the bow up at a 45 degree angle and as you pull the string back you lower bow till you are aiming at the target. Fire. See this link for a crazily in depth description.

Some important details:
Your index finger and middle finger should only just hook onto the draw string. You don't want to grab the draw string with a fist or else when you release the string to fire, your fingers are bound to get in the way. Just hook your fingers onto the string by the top most inside of your knuckle.

If the arrow keeps falling off as you draw the bow, you can hold it in place by your left index finger., just like someone who is just learning pool does to a pool cue. Once the bow is drawn, move your finger out of the way.

Don't grab the bow. Just like how you don't want to grab the string, don't tightly grasp the handle of the bow either. Just let it sit lightly in your hand. The point is that the archer will get in the way of a good shot by not being relaxed. Be relaxed and only have the most minimal contact with the bow.

When you draw the arrow back, you shouldn't pull back as far as you can. It is ideal that the string pass right in front of the corner of your lip.

Arrows have three feathers on the back end to stabilize the flight. Two of the feathers are the same color and the third is a different could. The odd color faces towards you, so that as the arrow leaves the bow, the feather isn't ripped off along the way.

Shoot on an out breath. I hear snipers do this too.

I don't actually know what else to say. Of all the things I have been introduced to for this blog, I don't think anything was more hands-on than archery. It's not particularily difficult to do but requires infinite amounts of practice to master.

Diagrams stolen from Aliran Tempur Ikhtiar.

Under the Cowl - The Real Bruce Wayne

2010-01-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

One often stumbles across discussions about Superman's core personality. Is he really Clark Kent Midwestern farmboy who saw the world needed a hero and took up that social role not because he wanted to but because the world needed him - or - is he Kal-El, child of gods, sent to earth as savior and who as such finds it necesary to take on a human persona to ensure his humanity remains in tact. Although Kill Bill argued for the second, I tend to see Superman as the first.

This discussion is often ported directly to Batman. Is Bruce Wayne the core personality or is the Batman? I think that it is a mistake to even ask this question. Bruce Wayne can be a far more complex character than this debate allows for. Bruce Wayne is a man who choses to dress up as a monster at night and in order to hide this secret plays a fopp to the world at large.

Batman isn't a personality. He was theatrically designed to be seen as a supernatural force of justice. There is no arguing with the Batman, no talking to him or avoiding him, no getting to know him. You just pray he doesn't happen to you.

The Bruce Wayne the world at large knows isn't a personality either. He doesn't have any true intentions. He is a character cooked-up because his wealth makes him a person of interest, interest he wisely wishes to avoid.

Neither is the true Bruce Wayne. The real Bruce Wayne is not the millionaire playboy or the urban demon. He is a man who has spawned both of these characters to achieve his ends. (As an interesting side note, most of the queer readings I've come in contact with start their interpretation with the observation that Bruce and Dick live duel lives: their alteregos being their true selves and their secret identities masks that don't extend to a social life.)

It's very unlikely that DC will ever portray Batman as a villian and as long as he is a hero, they won't overtly give him mental diseases. Therefore, portraits which give Batman a split personality as striking as Two-Face's will never be canonically accepted for long periods. Stories like Darwayn Cooke's Egos which explore to just what extend Bruce Wayne is fractured will continually arise and will always allow us to read between the lines of his dual life but there is a single core personality beneath the masks and cowls. So we must approach Bruce Wayne's personna as a cohesive unit which acts out two roles in order to achieve his ends. What that personna is and what his goals are has been in a state of continuous change since 1949.

Some people look at serial characters, especially Batman, and argue that he isn't anything except what we interpret him as. According to Neil Giaman's 'Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?' the nature of this man is unconsequential as long as he fights the good fight to the bitter end. Nick Mamatas would go even further and said in an essay included in Batman Unauthorized ``Batman is good at being all ... things because he isn't really anthing more than that logo.'' He is a floating signifier meaning that he is nothing but a saved space that can point to anything we want (anything that will make DC money). While I agree with this sentiment to an extent,the serial nature of comic books with it's retrospective retellings by various authors and long established fanbase with it's retention of previous versions leads to more of an evolution of and list of accepted Batman portrails.

Paranoid Control Freak
After this Batman watched his parents' lives ripped away from him, he vowed not to get his revenge on criminals but to remove them all together. This Batman is determined to never let tragedy touch him again by being better and stronger than even the worst villian. The world will not be safe until his war on crime is won. This is the Batman from the one episode “Artifacts” of the TV series “The Batman” who left a digital copy of himself for future generations in case any of his old rogue gallary should be resurected in the distant future. This is the Batman from 'Tower of Babel' and the Batman from 'War Games'. This is the Batman who has a plan for every alien invasion, every betrayal and every improbable scenario. He's an expert in everything. Although this Batman knows the strategic value of working in teams, having allies and training partners, he always keeps himself slightly removed. Losing them as friends would cause him pain so he pushes them away.

Possessed Meglomaniac
This is the Batman of Dark Knight Returns. He isn't a hero. He's a vigilianty. No, not just a vigilianty - he's the goddamn Batman. The best version of this Bruce Wayne might just be from 'Nine Lives'. This Bruce Wayne isn't above using thugs to protect his interests. The book starts with the words: ``Bruce Wayne was a man filled with anger, spite, and greed... A man obseesed with justice.`` Later the lead character and narrator notes ''He is a cloistered man driven by gigantic - - almost supernatural forces, not simply greed as I thought.`` This Bruce Wayne is not only a violent sociopath but also a ruthless industrialist. His actions may result in a better world and that's how he may justify them but that isn't the true reason why he's become the Batman.

Haunted Hero
This Batman can never do enough. He couldn't save his parents when he was a child and so racked with remorse he tries to makeup for that terrible failing by saving others. But it's never enough good to bring his parents back. And so the mission is never over and the war never won. This is the Batman with display cases in his Batcave reminding him of fallen allies and his constant inadequacy.

The White Knight Dressed in Black
This is the Batman seen in 'Batman: The Brave and the Bold' and the 1960s television show. He is the direct desendant of Robin Hood and Zorro. Heroes dressed in black. If this Batman began battling crime out of revenge based intentions, he has long since out grown that. He is not morally ambiguous in any way but rather has unquestionable balance, walking the thin line between good and evil perfectly, like some nonchalant tightrope master. It isn't a metastable state: there is never any doubt he will tip towards evil because his perfect balance is unshakable. This is what Luke Skywalker was meant to be. While the priestly Jedi knights religiously gaurded only in the Lightside and the greedy Sith lords took advantage of the Darkside rejecting all selflessness, only Luke Skywalker balanced to the Force.

Subversive Freedom Fighter
This is the Batman from Batman: Year 100 and Batman Strikes Again. This Batman is about self empowerment. He frees people from control, be that control by the government or control by our fears of criminals. He has bettered himself into a highly skilled adventurer who nolonger has anything to fear from the cowardly criminals who killed his family. This man seeks to be an inspiration to the citizens of Gotham,. His goal is to cause others to also find the hero within themselves. This is the Batman that took Jason Todd under his wing to bring out the hero within him.

Fascist
This is the Batman Alex Ross showed at the very beginning of 'Kingdom Come', the Batman who is willing to build an army of robots to comb the streets in search of social deviatants. This is the Batman who built Brother Eye. To him the ends justify the means and the only acceptible end is the safety of the innocent. This is the Batman who demanded that Commisioner Atkins allow him command the police during War Games. It's interesting to read “The Cult”, a parable about the censorship of the Comics Code and how moralists shackled and immasculated Batman. In the story and in real life, Batman was able to escape his imprisonment and become victorious. But there is a strange and haunting subtalty in the story. After escaping from the villian who represents the bookburning rightwing, Batman returns in a tank and by force reastablishes the social structure. In two separate occasions, he allows individuals to die for the greater good of the whole and to conclude the matter he burns every the memorial of what happened. He imposes his moral code on others by threat of violence and is constantly sacrificing the rights of indivicuals for the security of the community.
I hope that I have demonstrated that there are certain archetypes to the character of Batman. Clearly, an interesting character is a multidimensional one and so some of the best Batman stories are those that mix these archetypes and put them at odds with one another. If you have thoughts about this, it would be great to hear them. I realize that even in this list foundamental building blocks for an acceptible portrail, there is room for some overlap. For example, this old blog post made me question whether or not my "Possessed Meglomaniac" was actually one and the same as the "Fascist". But after thinking about the definition of fascism and what the blogger was describing I think that he was using the term incorrectly. The Batman he was describing was not a fascist. So did I miss any cornerstones to the history of the character? Or do you think that Batman really can be anyone in the costume?

PS. You really need to check out Agan Harahap's photos.
PSS. No more Batman Essays in the future. I promise.

Batman Returns

2010-01-02T22:02:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have been reading Building Batman for a while will have realized that every once in a while I disappear for long periods of time. I won't bore you tales of assassin cults and deadman spirits yearning for vengeance (ten Batblog-Batpoints for anyone who can correctly identify which Batbook that's a quote from) but unfortunately these periods are going to pop-up every once and a while. That being said 3 months was far too long a period to go without a single entry. Hopefully you'll forgive me for disappearing sporadically.

I may have let down my blog but I certainly haven't given up my training. For physical work, I've still been swimming and jogging. I got my yellow belt in Jui Jutsu. I've gone bouldering a handful of times. As for mental training, I've begun reading Grey's Anatomy and preparing little summaries which I've been writing as review but which I'll post on Building Batman for your pleasure. I've been introduced to archery for the Building Batman blog and tried throwing the bo shuriken. I'll write entries for these over the next couple of days.

My mission to become Batman continues.

Bang Bang, He Shot Me Down Bang Bang, I Hit the GroundBang Bang, That Awful SoundBang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down

2009-10-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

Technically, ballistics is the science of how projectiles travel in flight. Forensic Ballistics is a misnomer since it doesn't concern itself with a projectile's flight but rather about analyzing the firearms used in crimes. Perhaps, ballistic fingerprinting is a slightly better term. Ballistics is actually a subset of the forensic science of Toolmark Analysis. Guns are a tool and ballistics experts study the marks left on bullets by the guns. I'll explain this as we go.

Bullets are made up of three components: primer, propellant (held in a cartridge) and the actual bullet.

The primer is a shock sensitive explosive – it will detonate if struck or if a spark occurs. The primer is kept in a tiny cup in the cartridge's head. The gun's hammer has a pin on it which directly strikes the primer. The detonation goes through a small hole in the cup and ignites the propellant. The explosion in the confined area forces the bullet out the barrel. By Newton's Third Law when the bullet explodes out the barrel, the cartridge must recoil backward. A piece of metal in the gun, called the breech, stops the cartridge from flying into the shooter's face.

Pause for a moment and realize that the hammer striking the cartridge will undoubtedly leave a mark and that you could most likely tell the gun manufacturer from this mark alone. Additionally, The breech will leave a mark on the head of the cartridge. Finally, an extractor will grab the cartridge and eject it also leaving another set of traceable markings. Back to the bullet:

The bullet is now cruising through the barrel. Back when guns were first invented, the projectiles would be very unstable and tumble in the air. This made them extremely imprecise. Rifling changed all this. The barrel of the gun is given a set of helix grooves. The heat from the gun powder causes the bullet to expand slightly. It expands into these grooves and then gets locked into the tracks. When the bullet comes out of the barrel it is spinning! Get it?

Why spinning? Because the spinning adds stability (and reduces air friction apparently). Consider a spinning top. It is very hard to knock off course compared to non-spinning top. We already discussed this when we talked about boomerangs.

But clearly, the grooves have dug into the bullet. By comparing the marks on a bullet found at a crime scene to a bullet fired from a confiscated gun, an expert can determine from these marks whether or not the bullet was fired from the suspected gun.

The data from ballistic forensics is not just class evidence but can also constitute individual evidence. Every time the bullet goes through the barrel it changes the rifling grooves, just as they change the bullet. The scratches and imperfections cause each ballistic fingerprint to be different.

There are a couple of things to be aware of:
Just because two bullets were fired from the same gun does not guarantee that the markings will match. Rust build up can change the stria or repeated firings of the gun will cause an evolution of the stria – imperfections in the bullet alter the groves in the barrel or the barrel of the gun could be replaced or purposely altered.

PS It seems fitting to add that if you want to read about Batman's relationship with guns rather than forensic ballistics you should check out the definitive post over at Silver Age Comics.

Batman's Fingerprints

2009-10-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

Pattern evidence (or here) is the oldest branch of forensic science, although it's use as individual evidence. Individual evidence is any object which can be said to come from a one particular source. There is no chance (no whatsoever, wink) that it came from any other source. The pattern evidence covered in Jay Siegel's beginner's guide are:
Finger Prints,
Firearms,
Handwriting,
Accelerant Residue
Blood Splatter

Other kinds of individual evidence include paint chips, fractured fragments of glass and of course DNA. Individual evidence should be compared to class evidence. Class evidence can not be associated with any one particular person or source. Class evidence is still useful of course. Hair and fibers are class evidence. So is ink and dye or certain physical characteristics of drugs. Show prints or tire tracks might be class evidence. Class evidence is tied to groups not to individuals.

Finger prints, forensic ballistics (a term the author has a problem with) and handwriting are all supposed to be individual evidence. They are all supposed to be able to identify whether or not a potential source has produced the piece of evidence.

Despite the fact that forensics has been using certain types of pattern evidence for over 100 years, it can justifiably be criticized. Pattern evidence can grouped into the so called “experience-based forensic sciences”. Since there can be no absolutely quantitative analysis of these, forensic “scientists” who work with these types of evidence rely on experience and judgment. That's hardly what I would refer to as hard science.

Finger Prints
Finger prints are pretty cool. You have them on your fingers, palms, toes and souls. We've all stopped to look at them in our life but have you ever wondered what they might be for? They add traction to your grip so that you can hold on to things better. The ridges appear during the eighth week of a pregnancy and remain unchanged (other than growing in size, unless of course they are artificially altered which by the way just makes identification that much easier, duh) throughout a persons entire life. The root of the ridges is in the middle layer (called the dermal papillae) between your dermis and epidermis.

Finger prints are not determined by your genes (cough... not completely determined by your genes). Identical twins have easily distinguishable prints. People argue that it is impossible for two people to have the exact same set of finger prints (although how they would have legitimate statistics on this is beyond me). In any case, finger prints are usually an acceptable form of individual evidence.

When the surface of your skin comes in contact with a surface (glass, plastic but even paper and fabric) biological (like perspiration, skin cells or proteins) and alien (like ink or oil) material is left behind forming a latent print. If the print is visible to the naked eye and needs no amplification, it is called a patent print, such as if it were left in paint or blood. If the print is actually impressed into some matrix (like wax) then it's called a plastic print.

When they are latent (i,e, invisible) they must be found. Smooth surfaces can be dusted or fumed with superglue. Magnetic powders can be used for surfaces with fine texture. Dusting isn't the only way. Chemical fuming with iodine creates temporary reddish images which must be photographed. Silver nitrate can be applied to latent prints as a aqueous solution but therefore can't be used on surfaces that can't get wet. Ninhydrin can be sprayed onto latent prints. It reacts with amino acids to forms a a colored compound. Ninhydrin even works on porous surfaces (i.e. paper!). Laser luminescence can also be used.

So they can find them but what do forensic scientists see? Fingerprints are made up of various topographical elements.

1) The print will have a sort of pattern. There are four major patterns: either the ridges loop, arch, tent or whorl. The four general types are typically broken down into eight patterns which can be seen in the figure.

2) Besides the general pattern there are little details in the ridges, called “minutiae”. Ridges can do all kinds of things:
Bifurcations - when ridges split (trifurcations occur too)
Ending Ridge – self explanatory
Dot – a tiny round island
Short Ridge – a small isolated segment
Enclosure – when a ridge bifurcates and then reconstitutes

3) And looking at even more detail (under a microscope) gland pores, the shape of edges or little scars can help to compare prints

As a final note finger prints can be used to identify some sorts of drug use by individuals.

This was a little more extended than I would have like. Tomorrow I'll cover handwriting and ballistics.

Batman The World's Greatest...Forensic Scientist?

2009-10-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

I picked up an introductory book on forensics this weekend and thought I would recapitulate and review it for you. Batman is undoubtedly well versed in forensic science. I have read an online discussion or two on what kind of scientist Batman is.

Like a few people state: He's a forensic scientist. And it's true! Forensic scientists are multidisciplinary just like Batman. And really anybody who applies the techniques and methods of science to solving crimes is a forensic scientist.

Here at Building Batman, I'm introducing myself to everything that someone would need to know to be Batman. And so, on with forensics. Because as everybody (who's read the last paragraph) knows Batman is the world's greatest forensic scientist!

The book I picked up is generically titled 'Forensic Science' and it's written by Jay Siegel who is the “Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biology, and Director of the Forensics and Investigative Sciences Program, at Indiana University-Purdue University”. I read “ Chemistry and Biology” as a single department and “Forensics and Investigative Sciences Program” as a supplement to a diploma of some kind. Otherwise, this guy must not sleep.

In any case, he seems to have recognized the public interest in forensics due to fiction like the CSI franchise. As such, he doesn't really explain anything in the book but rather just introduces concepts and basic ideas. His intent is only to inform the general public on the topics and limitations of forensic science. He discusses the “CSI-Effect”, the exaggeration of forensic science's ability to magically and quickly collect and analyze all the evidence needed to convict bad guys. Furthermore, the CSI-Effect means that juries expect prosecutors to present incriminating forensic evidence. They tend to discount evidence that doesn't have the Authority of Science (notice the capital letters, please) backing it up.

But not only does forensic science have limitations but so do forensic scientists. Observer Bias (<---that's a great link) can creep in and corrupt the scientific method. Extra information (that may not even be true) can (and presumably does) influence the way that a forensic scientist interprets their results causing the scientist to get in the way of the science. Perhaps, forensic scientists should only be given the evidence and asked to apply scientific techniques to discover what they can. But if you think about that, it's not a very practical way of doing business. How should they know what to search for? or what tests should they apply? Perhaps the some piece of withheld information could be the key in solving a crime. Who decides what is “domain irrelevant”? It's a big question. Even wording in reports can cause subtle bias. There are other kinds of bias. There is Conformational Bias, where the results of one forensic scientist influence another's toward agreement. Or even a pro-prosecutor bias. The author certainly seems to think that regulatory bodies are lacking and that certification and supervision are needed.

And bias is definitely not the only human error that can hinder forensic science. Somehow, the evidence has to get from the scene of the crime to the lab. Only rarely do forensic investigators accompany detectives and police investigators to crime scenes. All evidence must be searched out and collected without damage, which can be tough if say the evidence is a single fiber or buried under the debris from and explosion or liquid blood that will putrefy. The author makes a very tight analogy. Crime scene investigations are immediate archaeological digs. Investigators sift through the evidence and clues to reconstruct a past event.

Forensic also should be limited by the courts. Not all evidence is relevant or competent and so not all evidence should be allowed to be admitted.
- Evidence must be material meaning it must have something to do with the case at hand.
- Evidence must be probative meaning it must prove something and not just be a fact.
- Evidence must competent meaning that it must abide by a set of rules – a spouse may not have to testify against their partner or a religious confession might not meet competence constraints.

Forensic scientists have expert witness status when they testify which simply means that they have knowledge or skills to draw conclusions from a set of facts that your average juror could not. This means that not only must they be good scientists but they must also be good teachers. Despite all this, we should remember that just because a scientist has arrived at some conclusion does not mean that it is de facto truth. People tend to believe scientists and so if they testify in a court case jurors may accept their words without question.

That's the background information. Over the next couple of days, I will summarize the material covered in “Forensic Science” by Jay Siegel. We'll talk about

Pattern Evidence
Evaluating PMI
Serology
DNA
Drugs
Fires and Explosions
Trace Evidence

Another Man's Treasure

2009-09-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

Walking home from work tonight at midnight (it's tough to be Batman when I spend so much of my time doing real people stuff) I found a boon. Someone is doing renovations to an old apartment building and there were a few pieces of scrap wood lying against the fence. It was clearly no good to anyone else but the blocks are quite thick (maybe 4' in width and depth) and maybe only 2"6' long. They might work perfectly as a target for the shuriken I should be receiving in the mail any day now.

Now all I have to do is find a hammer... I bet the real Bruce Wayne doesn't have to ask his neighbors if he can borrow a hammer.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

2009-09-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

I finished Batman: Arkham Asylum last night. The dream is over and it only lasted three days. Too bad. Now that I'm done the game, I don't really feel like the Dark Crusader. Too bad. So I'm back to my training: 20 laps in the pool during lunch, a 25 mile bike ride this morning and Jiu Jitsu in the evening. But before I get back into it here at Building Batman why don't I review the game for? Just a few comments.
I'll do it in a Pro-Con format and start with cons because the good drastically outweighs the bad and so I want to finish on the positive notes:
Cons:
1) The game was too forgiving. They made this soundtrack and setting that are as creepy as could be. It's really tense BUT because Batman just re-spawns whenever you screw-up, there are no consequences for my actions and therefore I'm not scared. Why did Resident Evil work so well so long ago? Because not only was it scary in all the ways that a scary movie was but if you as the player screwed up there were terrible consequences: you might not have anymore ammo for hours, or maybe you would die and have to start from a point that felt like it was at the very beginning of the game. Batman: Arkham Asylum lacked that. Since I wasn't concerned about any consequences, the tension that they worked so hard to make so good was diffused.

2) The game was very linear. Although it was placed on an island and you could theoretically go anywhere, in actuality there was only ever one path and it was always right in front of you. I'm not asking for a game like Fallout but give the world's greatest detective multiple ways to go about solving a problem.

Pros:
1) You couldn't have this game without Batman. In many ways, it's not just 'another Batman game' but it's a game about Batman. You couldn't just be anyone with a boomerang. The game actually explores his character.

2) It's not the rogue gallery vs Batman. It must have been so tempting to just trot every Batman character in and say, "Everyone against Batman!" Instead, Batman is stuck in a crazy storm. It's all about him and the Joker. When other villains show up they are there on their own terms and for their own reasons, not just as super-henchmen in the Joker's scheme.

3) Paul Dini wrote it (really the last two just boil down to this).

4) Mark Hamill is amazing.

Final Post

2009-09-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

This will be my last post. I will no longer need to continue my Batman training.

You see, I am Batman. Buying Arkham Asylum has instantly transformed me into the Caped Crusader. And so I will nor be learning any more of the skills Bruce Wayne acquired before becoming the Batman:

Because they're all really easy on my computer.

Batman's Shuriken

2009-09-17T23:02:00.000-07:00

I ordered shuriken today.

Shuriken...

Looking up shuriken online is a tougher than you might think. The internet seems to be overflowing with misinformation on the subject and people who do have the knowledge don't really seem all that keen on sharing it. I'm always sending you to Wikipedia to start your searches into new topics but this is one time when the article could be improved upon drastically.

Let's get one thing out of the way: we're not just talking about ninja stars.

Shuriken can be translated as "sword hidden in the hand" or "hand hidden blade" and really this shouldn't just be limited to thrown weapons but is more generally any blade which is hidden in your hand. "Shu-Ri" --> "hidden in the hand" and "Ken" ---> "blade".

You can get a lot of history but the general motif seems to be that even the most mundane items can be effective weapons. Coins, washers, needles, nails, knifes or even flat pieces of metal are potential weapons.

There are two basic forms that shuriken tend to take.

Bo shuriken are long spike-like throwing weapons. One can imagine that there will always be improvisational Bo Shuriken around: chopsticks, hair pins, nails or even screwdrivers.

The second type are shaken. While bo shurkien were straight and dart-like, shaken have some shape. Shaken can be further divided into two class. Hira shuriken are the most familiar: they are the throwing stars from the 1990's ninja craze- the ninja stars I mentioned earlier. Hira shuriken can have any number of arms. As far as I can tell roppo shaken has six arms, juji shaken have only 4 and enbangata shaken are washer-like disks that have no arms but just a sharpened circumfrence. Then finally there are senban shaken that are more like lozenge shaped (i.e. diamond shaped). Both hira and senban shaken tend to have holes in their centers which apparently improves aerodynamics and can be used to string a bunch of shaken together.

To recap:

Bo Shuriken --- long spikes

Hira Shaken --- stars

Roppo --- 6 armed shaken

Juji --- 4 armed shaken

Enbangata --- washer

Senban Shaken --- diamonds

I ordered a set of five bo shuriken from Flying Steel. Flying Steel seems like a reputable manufacturer but at a fairly reasonable cost. There were a couple of other suppliers (other than the multitudes and multitudes of junk sites around) but just like it is hard to find trustworthy information on shurikenjutsu, it's hard to find trustworthy sellers(if you are aware of any other worthwhile suppliers let me know). That being said Flying Steel seems very professional.

Now I just have to figure out what I'll do for a target before they arrive and I start practicing.

Gotham Knights Online

2009-09-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

Locked out of Gotham Knights Online! What does this mean? I read that blog everyday.

Here I am praying that more people will follow my Batman training so that I have a larger pool of potential experts and these guys are turning people away. Weird.

Oikiryu Jiu Jitsu

2009-09-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

I asked my sensei what school of Jiu Jitsu I'm studying today at class and found out that it is Oikiryu that I have become a pupil of.

So what do I do after class? I come home to look it up and write a detailed description of it for you my faithful readers. But what do I find out from my trusty search engine? Nothing.

Nothing at all. In the age of the internet how can that be?

So I start to get a little more creative. Maybe it's aikiryu... no, nope. If it is so young and so western then I wouldn't expect a confusion over the spelling.

So what's going on here? Did I misunderstand my sensei? Is my spelling wrong? Is it uncommon? As always if anyone has anymore information than I do please speak up. Leave me a comment.

PS. Last week we were introduced to methods for deflecting attackers armed with knives and this week we started point combat. Holy shit, Batman! Did I ever feel like a cat in water! I've never punch or kicked before this and I'm being thrown in the ring and asked to just do it! It was crazy but by the end I was starting to get the hang of it. Although, I was told I have to loosen up.

Batman's Last Fermi Problem

2009-09-11T16:52:00.000-07:00

Diamonds are just carbon all bound together. Each carbon is bonded to 4 other carbons. If you think about that a bit you will see that means there are TWO bonds for every atom (imagine/draw a fairly large grid - count the number of nodes/intersections and count the number of connecting lines. If this ratio isn't exactly half it's because the edges of the grid might cause trouble [if you draw it smarter or bigger it will get closer to 2]). That means that there is 3eV of energy available for every atom. Let's assume Mr. Freeze's gun can access all that energy.

Now that we know how much energy we can get from each atom we need to guess how many atoms are in a diamond. To do that we need the mass of the diamonds. When jewelers talk about carats their really just talking about mass --- 1carat = 0.2g. Maybe you know what the carats of some famous diamonds are? 100 carats is a BIG diamond so let's say 30 carats or in grams: 30 carats * (0.2g / 1carat)= 6g.

How many atoms are in 6g's of diamond? Well what's the atomic weight of carbon? If you don't know, can you imagine where carbon is on the periodic scale? It's near the beginning but not first and it's nowhere near the end. So say between 1 and 100. You could then say 10g / mol. OR you could have memorized your periodic table and remembered the value is actually 12 g/mol but really what's the difference?

So now we know the number of atoms in the diamond is about 6g * (mol/12g) * (6*10^{23}atoms/mol) = (36/12)*10^{23}atoms = 3*10^{23}atoms. And since we guessed about 3eV is released from each of those which means the energy is (3eV/atom) * 3*10^{23}atoms * 1.6\times10^{-19}J/eV = 9* 1.5 *10^4J = 13.5 * 10^4J = 10^5J.

Is that alot? We said in previous questions that a person uses 3.5*10^3J every day and the energy of a subway train is 10^7J. The energy Mr. Freeze can get from a diamond is somewhere in between.

And here ends the Fermi Problems part of my Batman training - at least on the blog. But if you have any superhero Fermi problems that you think I should do on Building Batman just leave a comment and I'll give them a whirl.

Batman's May Be Chemist But I'm Not Yet

2009-09-08T14:13:00.001-07:00

Whoa!

Don't I have any chemists reading Building Batman? No? No chemists training to become Batman? Oh, well...

I was thinking about the Final Fermi Problem and it occurs to me that I made a bad estimate:
I said that each carbon is bound to 8 others because of the crystal structure. That's not true.

Carbon is tetravalent which means it will always have the equivalent of 4 four bounds, no matter the crystal structure.

Now you and I know that when estimating that factor of two isn't a big deal but I thought I'd better tell you in case you're you're doing this last Fermi question or in case a chemist stumbles past Building Batman.

PS If you are a chemist, you might get a kick out of this periodic table

Fermi Freeze - Batman Training's Last Fermi Problem

2009-09-07T16:26:00.000-07:00

I like that fact that every reaction releases about 1.5eV of energy so let's make our last superheroic Fermi Problem one that uses that fact and then move on with the Batman Training.

What's the energy Mr. Freeze get's from diamonds (assuming it's a chemical process and not nuclear)?Diamonds are just carbon all bound together. Each carbon is bonded to 8 other carbons. (As always I'm just putting the simplest way of thinking about this together: Diamond is a crystal structure made of two fcc lattices).

Great Comment

2009-09-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

I know that not everybody who reads a blog takes the time to read the comments but M.C. Elroy left a really great note on my jiu jitsu post and I wanted to point it out to you.

Flash Forward a Billion Years

2009-09-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

So we are going to guess how much oxygen the Flash uses each day.

As a few reminders:
   (1)The hydrocarbons in our food get split up and carbons are oxidized into C0_2 meaning we really do burn the food we eat.

   (2)Typically,there is an energy release of about 1.5eV when one atom exchanges an electron with another. The units eV are related to joules by 1eV = 1.6 * 10^{-19}J = 2* 10^{-19}J.

   (2)Food is mainly composed of long chains of CH_2. When it is decomposed to get the energy it holds the carbon binds to two oxygen and the two hydrogens bind to a single oxygen meaning there are TWO reactions for every CH_2 which need THREE oxygens.

We already found that the Flash uses 5 * 10^9J per day. How many reactions is that? Turn joules into electron volts and divide by 1.5eV for every reaction:

5 * 10^9J * (1.5eV / 1.6 * 10^{-19}J) = 5 * (1.5/1.6) * 10^{28} = 5* 10^{28} reactions.

And we said 3 oxygens for every 2 reactions means we need 5 * 10^{28} * 3/2 = 7 *10^{28}$ oxygens per day.

That sounds like a lot but is it really? There's 6 * 10^{23} atoms in every mole and oxygen is eighth on the periodic table which means 1 mole weighs 8 grams. So then the Flash goes through 7 * 10^{28} * (1/6 * 10^{23}) * 8g = 8 * 10^5 g = 800 kg of oxygen each day. WOW but wait a minute...

In the last question we found that there's about 10^{18} kg of oxygen in the atmosphere. Which means it would take the Flash 10^{15} days or 3*10^{12} years or 3000 billion years.

Jiu Jitsu

2009-09-05T19:14:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday was my first Jiu Jitsu class. It was great! I think I'm going to enjoy this component of my Batman training more than I had expected.

So before I get started I should clear up a few things. When I mentioned that my quest to become Batman would soon include martial arts training, I posted a link to Jiu Jitsu. Jiu Jitsu is a Brazilian variant that is descended from Judo. This IS NOT what my dojo teaches. The class that I'm attending teaches Jujutsu; however, they spell it Jiu Jitsu. As I understand it, Jiu Jitsu is a more archaic term and Jujutsu is the more accepted term.

Out of respect for my dojo, I'll refer to the tradition as Jiu Jitsu, ok?

To get an idea of the spirit of Jiu Jitsu, let me give you a brief historical tour of it's development. In feudal Japan, the combination of heavy armor and a highly tuned offensive techniques made samurai warriors the ultimate tank of the era. If one were to meet such an opponent unarmed and unarmored, one would need specialized techniques to be victorious. Striking an armored opponent wouldn't do the trick and allowing them the room to utilize a katana or yari would be a very bad idea. Jiu Jitsu is martial art for neutralizing enemies through grappling, throwing, locks and chokeholds. In this regard, it is far more akin to western wrestling than other eastern martial arts; however, there is a substantial difference: whereas wrestling seeks to pit strengths, Jiu Jitsu is literally the "art of softness" or the "way of yielding". Wikipedia says it quite well: "These techniques were developed around the principle of using an attacker's energy against him, rather than directly opposing it."

We began with exercises and stretches. These weren't so bad except for the squats. Those are muscles that I have not invested in and they were stiff until this morning. We were then introduced to falling techniques. Since Jiu Jitsu is a grappling art, absorbing the impact of falls is crucial.

We then learned three locks and two chokes. Although I've been practicing them every day I won't try to explain them to you yet. Don't worry though. I will as soon as I feel more comfortable with them and have found a reasonable body of resources on the internet to point you to.

PS If anybody does know of good resources that I should be familiar with please leave me a comment.

Fermi's Big Gulp

2009-09-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

So we already guessed how much the Flash would have to eat but what about breathing? He needs air to turn all that food into energy. Would he use up the entire atmosphere?

Ok. Some backup science info. Energy release is controlled by mitochondria and the production of ATP through the Krebs cycle. It seems fairly complicated to me but in essence the most important thing for accessing all the stored chemical energy in the food is the oxygen intake and the carbon dioxide output. The hydrocarbons in our food get split up and carbons are oxidized into C0_2 and a bunch of water reactions are also needed to make this happen BUT the point is we really do basically burn the hydrocarbons that we eat.

Chemical reactions are all about exchanging electrons. Remembering that we are estimating: typically, when one electron is exchanged between two atoms there is an energy release of about 1.5eV. The units eV stand for electron volts and their just a convenient unit for \textbf{energy} when electrons are involved. To convert to everyday joules just know 1eV = 1.6 * 10^{-19}J = 2 * 10^{-19}J.

And one last thing: Most everyday hydrocarbons are just long chains of CH_2.

Breathing Room

2009-09-02T21:35:00.001-07:00

Last night I attended my very first Jiu Jitsu class and so have raised my Batman training to the next level. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. But tonight, let's answer yesterday's non- Superhero Fermi Problem (we'll use this answer for the next, and second from last Fermi problem).

The atmosphere pushes down on you (you might not have the weight of the world on your shoulders but you definately have the heavens weighing down on you). That pressure is measured in atmospheres (atm). The pressure of the atmosphere is normally 1atm (duh). In useful units 1 atm = 10^5 N/m^2. Where's that pressure come from? All the air molecules over head weigh down on you. Since the pressure is force per area, above every 1 meter squared there is a force (or weight) of 10^5N and remembering Force=Weight=mg where we round gravity to 10m/s^2. So the mass of the particles above 1 meter squared is 10^4kg.

We already used the area of the earth in the buses Fermi question and we use it again here: surface area of earth =5*10^{14} m^2. We know the mass of atmosphere above every square meter AND we know the total number of square meters that make up the surface of the planet. Therefore, we estimate the total mass of the atmoshere to be 10^4 kg/m^2 * 5*10^{14} m^2 = 5 * 10^{18}kg of air in the atmosphere!

BUT

Air isn't pure oxygen, O_2. The percent of the atmosphere that is O_2 definitely isn't 100%and it's not 1%. So we could guess 10% but I think that it's fairly common knowledge that air is 20% O_2 so let's use that number.

5 * 10^{18}kg * 20/100 = 10^{18}kg of oxygen. That's alot of elephants - or subway trains for that matter of oxygen. Wikipedia says that the atmosphere is really 5 quadrillion tons. A ton is 1000 kg and a quadrillion is 10^15 so we were only off by a factor of 5. Once again, we're pretty darn close.

Cause's He's Batman (and has a new game out)

2009-08-31T08:53:00.000-07:00

Ctrl+Alt+Del
To answer his question: No. Throwing a razor sharp boomerang knife is not a good way to incapacitate someone. However, from my boomerang throwing experience I think that a normal, non-knife-like boomerang could do the job. Batman would then need a separate shuriken weapon for quick cutting but nonlethal pain.
Building Batman will be training with shuriken next month. ' Can't wait.

Penny Arcade

P.S. Disney bought Marvel this morning (assuming the investors ok the 4 billion dollar deal).

Fermi Question: What is the mass of the Atmosphere

2009-08-31T07:55:00.000-07:00

What's the total mass of all the oxygen in the atmosphere?

Useful unit conversion: 1atm = 10^5 N/m^2.

Would the Real Superman Please Standup

2009-08-30T13:54:00.000-07:00

The mass of the train should be the same (recap: car of a train is heavier than a truck [we've heard the term oneton-truck so let's say a truck weighs 1 ton]. It's probably more than 10 trucks but less than 100 so we say 30 tons. And there are 6 cars so about 2 * 10^5kg.

In the Spider-man question we said the train was going about 30km/hr. But this is Metropolis, the city of tomorrow! So let's say the city has levitating Shinkansen which can travel upto 600km/hr. Since it probably didn't have time to reach it's fastest speed in the city we'll say the train has a velocity of 100km/hr = 100km/hr * 1000m/km * 1hr/3600s = 100/3.6 m/s = 30m/s when it comes flying of the tracks.

Just like before we can find it's original kinetic energy (KE = 0.5 * m * v^2 = 0.5 * 2 * 10^5kg * (30m/s)^2 =10^8J). That's an order of magnitude larger than the train Spidey stopped.

But here's the second kicker: whereas Spider-man took 10 blocks to stop the train Supes has only half a block if this train isn't going to crash into a crowded skyscraper. So remember there's 10 blocks in every kilometer - so half a block is about 50m.

So the force is F=W/d = 10^8J / 50m = 5 * 10^6N.

That implies Superman is about 500 times stronger than Spider-man. If that's not a 'super' Fermi problem, I don't know what is.

All this talk about Superman is a good excuse for me to put up this link to a Comedy.com post

Metropolis' Marvel - Stronger than a Locomotive

2009-08-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

This superhero Fermi problem is just like the last Spider-man one so we'll use it as warm up.

In Matt Wagner's Trinity, Superman catches an out-of-control train (with say 6 cars again) that comes off it's tracks as it rounds a corner. He brings it to a stop before it can hit any buildings.

How much force did the Man of Steel use to do this?

How to Replace Batman's Bottom Bracket

2009-08-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

I mentioned that I have running, swimming and biking each about twice a week throughout the
summer.

It turns out that all of that biking isn't just hard on me – It's hard on my bike too. My bike developed a grinding sound if I accelerated at all. Repairs needed to be done. But I figured that this could be a worthwhile exercise too. The Batman doesn't depend on anyone. Readers from the very beginning may remember that I suggested I don't really buy into the whole “Batman's the goddamn Batman. He built his bat-mobile from scratch, he personally programmed the bat-computer. All while staying out every night fighting crime and singlehandedly running a multinational corporation.” I tend to prefer the incarnations where Barbara handles all things computers, The Outsiders act as crack-squad, Harold (and later Hiro) takes care of equipment, Alfred manages Bruce Waynes' personally life and Mr. Lucius Fox runs the family business – rather than versions where Batman does everything himself. Not only is it more realistic it's also far more interesting.

BUT that being said, I have no doubts that Bruce is handy with mechanics and all things technical so I decided to fix my bike myself rather than bring it in to a shop.

I didn't know what I was getting into. First off, it would have been far cheaper to bring it into a shop since I had to buy a bunch of specialized tools and second I ended up doing way more repairs than I had expected to.

The funny sound came from my bottom bracket. Mine is a Cartridge bearing which just means that the bearings and the axle are housed in a sealed tube. The bracket is fitted to the frame of the bicycle by a square taper. This thing sucks. I had to buy an adaptor and the adaptor is a real pain.

So to change your bottom bracket you need to take it out before you buy a replacement (unless of course you work on your bike a lot and if that's the case why are you reading an introduction to replacing your bottom bracket?) To take it out you first remove your crankset (if your unlucky like me that requires a specialized tool called a crank extractor). This isn't difficult but just be careful when you screw the extractor into the crank – they are pretty fine threads. It's a clockwise turn to get the crankarms off.

Before doing anything else you have to measure the length of axle you are replacing and the width of the frame where it sits in. This is important. You then ask the boys at your local bike shop for a bottom bracket of those dimensions (the guy didn't believe me so I had to hull my bike all the way to the shop – I guess it's an uncommon size).

To remove the old bottom bracket you start on the non-drive side (i.e. the left hand side when you look down while sitting on you bike – the side without the chain). Using the stupid adaptor turn COUNTER-CLOCKWISE. Other side next (drive side). This time turn CLOCKWISE. Did I ever have a hell of a time getting these out. They were really seized in (I guess with rust). I had to buy a larger wrench to get more torque.

Inserting the bottom bracket is pretty simple since it's just two pieces and you just took it out. The only thing to remember is to grease the tapers! This is so that the bracket doesn't seize to the frame like it did for me.

While I was doing all of this I realized how warped my chainring was. Those are the big gears at the front. Since the bike was all apart I got a new one. In fact, the bike shop sold me my bottom bracket and the crankset as a single package. I guess that's pretty common.

I also decided to replace the hub gear. You have to know that my bike is a single speed and so doesn't have all those cassettes. It's just a single cogged freewheel like on a BMX. To remove this I needed another specialized adaptor. The trick to getting this off is to not use a wrench. PLEASE do yourself a favor and put the adaptor in a vice, set the wheel on top of it and then just turn the wheel (or maybe this is better but whatever). You get so much more torque and it is perfectly balanced.

Since I had this off I took out all the bearings, cleaned them and put them back in a ton of disgusting heavy grease. I also did this for my pedals.

This took a long time but it's finally done. In the spirit of Batman, I did it myself and I'm ready to be back on the road training.

Unfortunately, it's been pouring for hours.

The Dark Knight Returns

2009-08-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

I registered and payed for my beginner-level Jiu-Jitsu yesterday. It feels like I've been wait forever to start. The first class is on Sept. 2nd. Classes occur once a week and go for 10 weeks. I'll post what I learn each week.
P.S. I'll post all the other Fermi problems this weekend and then we'll be done with them.

For Those Who Don't Read AppleGeeks

2009-08-14T07:16:00.001-07:00

Sticky Situation

2009-07-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

This one's stolen from Guesstimation.

In the second Spider-man movie Spidey stops a six car subway train by attaching his webs to it and pulling it to a stop in 10 or 20 blocks.

How much force does he need to do this?

Food for Thought

2009-07-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

Let's answer this in three parts. How much energy does the average American consume, how much does that cost, how much does each calorie cost and how much energy would the Flash need.

There's a number of ways we could estimate how much one person spends per month for food. You could say that you eat out every meal (3 times a day) at some fast food joint for $10 a meal. That kind of life style has a monthly bill of 30 * 3 * 10=$1000 per month. I think that's high at $30 per day. What about $1 per day? At that price food would only cost you $365 each year. Ya right. So the easy numbers between $1 and $30 are about $10 per day or $3 per day. Let's be nice to Wally and say $3 per day or about $100 per month.

So we've guessed it can costs about $3 a day to eat (I know it seems low). Now we must guess how many calories you consume a day and so find the cost of every calorie.

How many calories do you eat per day? Maybe you know this maybe you don't. If not, maybe you know how many calories are in a McDonald's Value Meal (1167 cal) or in a can of coke (200 cal) or in a steak (500 cal). Therefore, you eat more than 1000 cal and probably not 10,000 cal. So then we guess the geometric mean which is 10^{7/2} = 3000 cal per day. So let's convert from calories to Joules (there's 4200 Joules in every calorie). 3000 cal/day * 4000 J/cal = 12 * 10^6 J/day. A physicist like Ray Plamer or Reed Richards would be happier if we turned this to Watts. Watts are Joules per second. So as a side note the power usage of a human being is 12 * 10^6 J/day * day/24hr * hr/60min * min/60sec = 150 W. Oh good - more power than a lightbulb.

So anyway that was a sidequest. The important thing is that a person consumes 3000 cal or 10^7 J everyday. Plus spends $3 a day for that food. That means that $1 will buy you 1000 cal or 4 * 10^6 J.

Next we have to estimate how much energy the Flash needs. Let's guess that most of his energy goes to running (that way if our answer is small compared to a normal person we can add the energy of a normal person to it or if our answer is big compared to a normal person we know that it is insignificant). The energy of him running is kinetic. We already used the equation for kinetic energy KE = 0.5 * m * v^2. If we allow for fictitious elimination of frictitous forces then if we can guess his speed, we will know the energy needed to get him to that speed. He needs that much energy every time he runs to that speed. Remember we are guessing for an average day, not at his fastest nor his slowest.

The speed of light (3 * 10^6m/s)?. %1 the speed of light? The speed of sound (300 m/s)? The speed of thought (only about 100m/s since it depends transport mechanisms of ions crossing membranes)?

Let's guess that he goes 10 times the speed of sound for an average run. The energy he needs to reach that speed is KE = 0.5 *m * v^2 = 0.5 * 100kg * (10 * 300m/s)^2= 0.5 * 100 * 9 * 10^6J=5 * 10^8J.

Since he needs that much energy every time he gets to those speeds we need to ask how often does he go that fast? We are talking about a cocky jock with a fairly large rogue gallery. So let's say he goes more and once a day but less than 100 times a day. The geometric mean: 10 times.

Then the energy the Flash needs for running in a day is 5 * 10^9J. At a price of $1 for every 4 * 10^6 J, the Flash must spend 5 * 10^9J / (4 * 10^6 J/$1) = $10^3 = $1000 more per day than muggles.

We said that a single person could eat for $100 per month and based on that the Flash's monthly grocery bill is $30,000. That's more than some of use make in a year! Notice that if we had said that Wally ate out for every meal his bill would be 10 times greater. A bright supervillain interested in discovering the Scarlet Speedster's secret identity might begin by looking for abnormally large grocery bills.

Like a Bat Out of Hell

2009-07-07T19:05:00.001-07:00

I happened to be in the western part of Canada this weekend and thought it would be really cool to do some bouldering in the rockies. I'm here for a really quick trip and so climbing was just going to be something I squeezed in as I drove into the eastern part of the mountains. I packed my shoes and everything seemed to be going really well. The guy I was going with was excited, the people I'm travelling with didn't care if we stopped for a bit and the weather was beautiful. Near the town of Coalman we spotted what looked like a great face. We pulled over, changed and started hiking. We just arrived at the site when suddenly a huge dark cloud lumbered over the mountain. It didn't waste anytime looming. It came fast and hard. We got stuck in a hail storm and didn't get any climbing done. The rain didn't let up until we were out of the mountains again. It was too bad. I don't know when I'll be back there.

The Cost of Being Super

2009-07-04T08:22:00.001-07:00

How big is the Flash's grocery bill?

For this superheroic Fermi Question you'd might like to know that every Calorie that you eat has about 4200 Joules of energy. Also guessing how fast he goes is tough. Consider average days for the Flash and think to yourself that he's much faster than the speed of sound but not any where near as fast as the speed of light. (Just an average day. That's all I'm saying.)

Skeletal

2009-07-03T06:21:00.000-07:00

How heavy is he without his skeleton? I'm about 70 kg. Logan's pretty buff. Maybe say 100 kg.

How much of that is bone? 1%? Nah. 100%? 30%? 10%? Ya, 10% seems like the best answer. 10% of 100kg is 10kg. So that's 10 kg of bone and 90 kg of other stuff in your body.

Well, let's guess that bone and muscle and everything inside of us is all the same density. This is really not so bad of a guess because nothing inside of us is as heavy as rocks or as light as air. We pretty much have the same density as water.

The density of water is 1 kg/L = 1000 kg/m^3. So then 10kg of bone has a volume of about 10 kg / 1000 kg/m^3 = 10^{-2} m^3.

If that normal skeleton is removed and replaced with an adamantium one. If we can guess the density of adamantium then we can multiply it to the volume of a skeleton that we just found and we will know the mass which we can then ad to the 90 kg of left over non-skeletal stuff.

What's the density of adamantium? Well it's got to be heavier than water. 100 times heavier? No way. 10 times heavier seems like a good guess which says it has a density of 10 * 1000 kg/m^3 = 10^4 kg/m^3. Another way we could find this is we could look up the densities of some metals and notice that tungsten is pretty heavy at 19.25 g/cm^3 and that iron and silver and all of those are all pretty close at 7.9 or 10.5 g/cm^3 which are both 10 g/cm^3 = 10^4 kg/m^3 as far as we are concerned.

So using this density we find that the mass of an adamantium skeleton is about 10^{-2} m^3 * 10^4 kg/m^3 = 100 kg. So now with his new shiny skeleton Dark Claw or Wolverine weighs 100 kg + 90 kg = 200 kg or about twice as much. This isn't a shockingly high value. A person had an adamantium skeleton wouldn't sink in and leave foot prints in concrete or be too heavy to use the elevator.

Dark Claw's Adamantium Skeleton

2009-06-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

In the 1990's DC and Marvel did a cross over event and mashed their characters together into "amalgams". The character they combine with Batman was Wolverine to create: Dark Claw.

At that time Wolverine had an adamantium skeleton which was one of the things that helped make him invincible (Batman often suffers from the same problem: invincibility by popularity). I can imagine some side effects to having a metal skeleton. Is weight one of them?

How heavy is Wolverine/Dark Claw with his adamantium skeleton?

Tons of Kryptonite

2009-06-28T16:54:00.000-07:00

Let's assume that the entire planet of Krypton is made of Kryptonite. With the wide variety of kryptonite this doesn't even feel like such a stretch of the imagination.

So the planet explodes causing the mass that was the planet to shoot outwards and expand as a shell of debre. If we can figure out the fraction of that shell to hit the earth than we know the amount of kryptonite to hit earth (if we know the original mass of the planet krypton. Let's go with the 10 times greater than earth that Mohitparikh guessed instead of my 25 times (although for estimating it doesn't really matter!)).

We need to know the area of the shell. That depends on how far it's expanded. So we have to ask ourselves: How far is Krypton from Earth?

Well, how long did it take Kal-El to get to Earth? The fastest his rocket (it's usually a rocket) could possibly travel is the speed of light. You don't have to know the speed of light to know that a light-year is a unit of distance. It is the distance that light can travel in 1 year. So if Kal-El was put in the rocket (that goes the speed of light) as a new born and he arrived on earth as a yearling then Krypton is 1 light-year away. If he arrives as a 10 year old then Krypton is 10 light-years away. Here's a fact: No solar system is as close as 1 light-year away from us. Usually Kal-El is not 10 years old when the Kents find him so let's take the geometric mean and say that he was a toddler of 3 when he crashed on Earth and therefore Krypton is 3 light-years away.

Some more facts: Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light-years from us. Sirius A and B are 8.6 light-years. Vega is 25 light-years. So by guessing 3 light-years we are saying that Krypton was one of Earth's closest neighbors in a really big neighborhood.

Let's find out what 3 light-years are in useful units. Everyone rememembers the speed of light? It's 3 * 10^8 m/s. Here's the coolest trick I learnt from the Guesstimation book: You can either to all the slow multiplying of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year --- OR --- you can memorize that there are pi * 10^7 s in every year. It's a really good estimate. It's easy to remember that pi is about 3.14 and there are 3.15 * 10^7 sec / year. Cool, eh?

Anyway, how many meters to Krypton? 3 light-years times 3 * 10^8 m/s * pi * 10^7 s/year equals 27 * 10^{15} m (cuz pi=3, remember?). Which we round to 3 * 10^{16} m.

So what is the area of the shell of the exploded Krypton when it reaches earth? Well, we just found the radius of the shell (3 * 10^{16} m) and the total area of a shell is A=4 * pi * R^2. Which means the area is 4 * 3 * (3 * 10^{16})^2 = 4 * 3 * 9 * 10^{32} = 100 * 10^{32} = 10^{34} m^2.

We only need one more piece of information: How much of that hits earth?

All the Kryptonite is kind of evenly spread over the sphere so the density is d = M / A = 6* 10^{25}kg / 10^{34} m^2 = 6 * 10^{-9} kg/m^2. Now we know how many kg pre square meter and all we need is the area of the Earth that this hits. It's really the silhouette area or the cross sectional area A = pi * r^2. To do this you need to know or guess the radius of the Earth. I happen to know that it is r = 6000 km = 6 * 10^6 m.

That means that the cross section of earth is A = 3 * (6 * 10^6 m)^2 = 3 * 6 * 6 * 10^{12} = 100 * 10^{12} = 10^{14} m^2. When we multiply the area by the density we will have the mass of Kryptonite that hit the Earth. 6 * 10^{-9} kg/m^2 * 10^{14} m^2 = 6 * 10^5 kg. Holy Rao, Superman. That's 600 tons! But if you think about spread over the entire earth most of it would be dust and really we never made any guess about what fraction of the mass on Krypton was Kryptonite.

Notice, the Wikipedia page on Krypton says that Superman's home planet is 50 light-years away. If we ignore what this would mean about how fast Kal-El's rocket would travel (not to mention the Kryptonite rocks themselves) and redo the calculation then there's only 2 tons of Kryptonite on Earth. BUT even if it moved at 10% of the speed of light, it would take the Kryptonite 500 years to get here.

How much kryptonite is on Earth?

2009-06-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

Batman's best friend Superman is a allergic to green chunks of his home planet. If Batman wants to find all of the Kryptonite on earth and destroy it or lock it away to keep Superman safe, how much should he look for?

OR

Batman doesn't like the Big-Blue-Boyscout who hasn't even figured out he can fly yet. So Batman's going to collect all the Kryptonite in the world to line the Batcave with thus making it impossible to Superman to attack Batman's child kidnapping and government over-throwing operations. How much Kryptonite is available?

This Fermi problem was posed by the book Guesstimation.

Crazy Krypton

2009-06-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

The mass of a planet creates gravity. If two planets are the same size and one has twice the mass as the other than it will also have a gravitational acceleration that is twice as big. On earth the acceleration of gravity is g=9.8ish m/s^2. For guesstimating 9.8 is rounded to a nice g=10 m/s^2.

How high is a tall building? 1 story? Nope. 10 stories. No. 100 stories. Yes 100 stories (the Chrystler Building is 77 stories and the Empire State Building is 102 stories. How high is each story? 9ft.

So that means that the total height of a tall building is 900ft. To make ft into meters we multiply by 0.3 making a tall building 300m tall.

Relative to the ground, the potential energy at the top of the building is PE = m*g*h. All we need to do is guess the mass of Superman. Let's use a nice round 100kg (He's not 10 kg and he's definitely not 1000kg (that's a ton) so the geometric mean is 100kg). So at the top of his jump Supes' potential energy is 100kg * 10m/s^2 * 300m = 3 * 10^5 J (J=joules which we can think of as shorthand for all those more basic units which went into the calculation or we can just leave them whatever).

So then in order to get that high he must start out with a kinetic energy which is that big: KE=PE. 1 / 2 m*v^2 = 3*10^5kg m^2 / s^2. We said Superman's mass was 100kg so the velocity is v=sqrt(6*10^3). The square root of 10^3 is 30 because we divide the exponent 3 in half and multiply the coefficient by 3 for the 0.5 that is left in the exponent. The square root of 6? I don't know but I know that the square root of 4 is 2 and the square root of 9 is 3 and 6 is between 4 and 9 so I'll say 2.5.

So Superman's speed when he jumps must be v=2.5 * 30 = 75m/s. That's pretty fast but not nearly as fast as sound (340m/s) so he doesn't have to worry about causing sonic booms. How about as fast as a bullet? Not a chance Check out the Orders of Magnitude wikipedia page. A bullet moves at like 3 times the speed of sound or 1000 m/s.

So if he jumps at 75m/s, what kind of force must his legs exert to get that fast? F = m * a and he starts from standing still and gets to 75m/s. The acceleration is a = v / t. We need some guess at how long he jumps for.

The golden age Superman wasn't really quicker than the average person. He could run and move fast but he sort of jumped normal so let's estimate how long a person jumps for before their feet leave the ground. 1 second? No way. That's a pretty long time. 0.1 second? That seems a little short. Let's take the geometric mean and say 0.3 seconds. Then the acceleration is a = 75m/s / 0.3s = 250m/s^2. And then the force his legs exert is F=ma=100kg*250m/s^2 = 2.5*10^4N (N is newton's which is the unit for force or weight).

That seems big but what force does the average person exert? 1ft? Ya... It seems small but 1ft * 3 = 0.3m and an average person definitely can't jump 1m so let's just pick a number in between 50cm seems like a good guess. So the average person's potential energy at the top of their jump is PE = mgh= 100kg * 10m/s * 0.5m = 500J which means they need an initial velocity:
KE = 0.5 mv^2 = 500J ---> v^2 = 10m^2/s^2 ---> v=3m/s.

So the average person's acceleration is a = v/t = 3 / 0.3 = 10m/s^2. And the total force they jumped with is then F = ma = 100*10 = 1000N = 10^3N.

Superman's jump was 2.5 * 10^4N and and average person's was 10^3N. So Superman's jump is 25 times stronger than an average person's.

So to make Superman jump like a normal person on Krypton, the gravity must be 25 times greater. The gravitational acceleration on Krypton would then be 25 * 10m/s^2 = 250m/s^2. To get a gravitational acceleration that is 25 times greater on a planet the same size as earth, the mass of Krypton would have had to have been 25 times greater too. The mass of Earth is about 6*10^24kg which means the mass of Krypton would have been 1.5*10^26.

You should really read Physics of Superheroes to see what this means about what must have caused Krypton's destruction.

On that note, I think the Fermi Problem I pose tomorrow will be about Krypton's explosion.

What was the mass of Krypton?

2009-06-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

Back in the dawning heyday of the superhero, writers were still determining the extent of Superman's powers. There was a time when Superman's powers didn't come from our yellow sun. One important distinction between then and now was that Clark couldn't fly. He was only "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound". It was explained that his super strength was a result of Krypton's larger gravity.

So, Detective, based only on the statement that he is "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound", what was the mass of Krypton? Some help for this Fermi question: It's a good idea to guess that Krypton is about the same size as Earth. You might be interested in remembering some high school physics that to jump to a height (h) you initially need the same kinetic energy (KE = 0.5 * m*v^2) as the potential energy at the top of your jump (PE = m*g*h).

Batty About Buses (a superhero Fermi question)

2009-06-23T21:02:00.000-07:00

Ok so the Joker has planted a bomb on one city bus and Batman must track it down before the end of rush hour. How many buses could it possibly be hidden on?

We might have some idea of how many blocks we would have to walk to catch a bus in a dense city like Gotham and how long we would have to wait until the bus would come. So then if we can guess how big Gotham city is we could make an estimated guess at how many buses it would need.

So how large an area is Gotham city? 1km^2? No idea? Ok, well let's say Gotham city is about the same size as NYC. So what's the size of NYC? I have no clue.

So what do we do? We compare to the size of something we know. I said that the area of the earth is 5*10^14 m^2. And how many NYC fit on earth? Ok, bad question but what's the size of the USA? Well how many USAs would fit in the world?

1? Bad guess must be bigger. 10? No still bigger. 100? Ya that's a good guess. But seems a little big.

So we take the geometric mean of 10 and 100 which is 10^((1+2)/2) = 30.

Ok so if the area of earth is 5*10^14 m^2 and 30 USAs fit on earth than the area of the USA is about... well 5/3 is about 1 ... come on! Remember we're estimating. So we say, ``who cares?'' Ok so 5/3=1 and 10^14 / 10 means we subtract the exponents 14-1=13 so (5/3) * 10^(14-1) m^2 = 10^13 m^2. Check out the "actual"' answer. So how many New Yorks fit in the USA? I don't know. But I do know how many states do. Assume all the states are about the same size and say there's a nice round number of them: 50 (if there weren't a nice round number we would round it. Like say 48 to 50). So the average area of each state is 10^13 / 50 = 2*10^11 m^2. So we estimate that New York state has an area of 2 * 10^11 m^2 and the official area of NY is 1.4*10^11 m^2. Not bad.

And finally to estimate the area of NYC: how many NYCs fit in NY state? 1? nah. 100? Maybe? 1000? Somewhere between 100 and 1000. So the geometric mean is 300. Then the area of NYC is about 2*10^11 m^2 / 300. 11-2=9 and 2/3 is about... oh I don't know 1. So then the area of NYC is 10^9 m^2. Actual area of NYC (drumroll please): 1.2144 * 10^9 m^2. Wow pretty damn close.

And Gotham is about the same size as New York. Ok now. How many buses? Let's guess how many roads are in Gotham. First let's say Gotham City is square. Then it has a width or length of the square root of the area. Remember from the last post that we square root by halving the exponent: =10^{3/2} km = 10 * 3km =30km. Ok and how many blocks are in 1km? 1? no. 100? no. 10? ya that sounds about right. 10 blocks for every 1km. That's like 20 city blocks in a mile. So if Gotham is 30km by 30km and there's 10 blocks per km then Gotham is 300 blocks by 300 blocks. The roads make grids around the blocks so there are 600 roads in Gotham city.

How many roads have buses on them? Every road? No way. Every 10 blocks? Too big. Geometric mean = 3. We guess that in a densely populated city like Gotham or New York there is a bus route every 3 blocks. So that means that of the 600 streets 200 have bus routes on them which each run for about 30 km (about the length of the city).

And how often do they come? Never fast enough, right? I don't know every 10 minutes seems fast but every 30 minutes seems slow. Let's guess every 20 minutes.

And how fast do they drive? Not 1km/hr that's slower than you walk (10 blocks in 1 hr? Sloooow) but 100km/hr which is like freeway speed. So Geometric mean = 30km/hr.

Ok so if the buses go 30km/hr and come every 20minutes then we can guess the distance between buses: 30 km / hr times (1 / 3 )hr = 1km.

We've got it!!! On each route there must be one bus every km over a 30 km distance and there are 200 routes. (1bus/km) times (30km/route) times (200routes) = 6000 buses in Gotham City.

That took a little while but the math was easy and we could have scribbled it on a napkin or maybe done it in our head. But how did we do?

Well... (and remember as long as we're within ten times bigger or ten times smaller we're pretty happy) according to the wikipedia article on the MTA fleet there are 6,251 buses in fixed route service. The article on the NYC transit buses says about 4500 buses. Either way, 6000 is a pretty good guess.

How many buses are in Gotham City?

2009-06-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

You don't need any information. Just answer it. You do need some idea of the area of something (ANYTHING) to compare to. Any area. The size of your state? Your city? Your country? The planet earth? For example, I happen to know that the planet earth has a surface area of 5 * 10^14 square meters (m^2). Don't ask me why. It's just something I picked up.

Oh and I know I haven't really shown you how. But let this be our learning example.
AND remember no looking up answers and no calculators. Do it in your head or on the back of a napkin or envelope or any scrap of paper.

Feel free to leave answers or guesses or questions or thoughts.

Dealing with Big and Small Numbers

2009-06-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

How are we going to learn to guess? It's actually something we can learn. For example, say you ask me, "How many people are on earth?"
So I look on Wikipedia and find an estimate that on May 31, 2009 the earth's population was 6792,467,727. Wow down to the person: 6 billion blah blah blah and TWENTY SEVEN! Good job Census Bureau. But really now, that's a pretty useless number. Most people would have guessed 6 billion and really 7 billion would have been a better guess BUT and this is the point I'm trying to get to: the twenty seven people are a useless detail when estimating.

In fact! The 6 or 7 is pretty useless. When estimating the only important word is BILLION.

Don't get me wrong there will be times when we'll keep the 6 or 7 but remember the point of these Fermi questions is to get good estimates without looking things up and without using a calculator. So say we choose 7 billion and then we have to divide it by 2, ok? 7 / 2 is ... I don't know (actually I do but humor me) that's tougher math than 6 billion / 2. 6 / 2 = 3 SO THREE IS CLOSE ENOUGH. We will always chose the easy math or just drop numbers whenever we want.

Ok? I know that this will take some getting used to for anyone in the audience who wrongly thinks that the details matter. Another example: we were all in some high school math class and the teach asked someone to put some number through their calculator. Say you were calculating the area of a circle of radius 2m. The formula for area is
.
So some kid puts it through their calculator and says 12.56meters squared. The teacher says that's correct BUT then some annoying kid (that kid was usually me, by the way) shouts "No, it's actually 12.56637061...blah blah blah . Ok so maybe the annoying kid was more accurate but come on! The amount of time it takes to write those useless numbers out and he had to have used his calculator. There's no way he did it in his head.Us, here at Building Batman however, will always say things like
.
Who cares about the details. We are just estimating to get a guess. So then we'd say the area of the circle is 3*2*2 = 12. Close enough for the girls we go out with, ok?

And back to the world population of 6 or 7 billion.
How many zeros are in a billion? There's nine. So then the world's population is 7000,000,000. That's a lot of zero's. From now on we're going to use something called scientific notation. Don't be scared of it. It's actually really easy. How many times would you need to multiply 10 to the 7 to get 7000,000,000? Just count the zeros. Nine times. So we write this as 7 * (10 nine times) and the "nine times" is just taking the power. So 7 * (10 to the power 9) =
.
Because I'm writing this on a blog I'm going to write taking

as 10^9, ok?Why this "trouble"? Well, for two reasons: 1) if we wrote out all the zeros sometime we'd miss count or forget a zero and then we'd be screwed because 2) it tells us the size. Really the 7 in 7 * 10^9 isn't so important the important number is the 9 because the 9 tells us the size or the order of magnitude. If we change the 7 to a 6 so what? Our guess would be off by a little bit but it's only a guess so little bit here, a little bit there doesn't matter. We aren't looking for the "real" answer. We're looking for a good estimate. On the other hand the 9 makes a big deal. Turn the 9 to and 8 and only 10% of the population survives!!!

We can do the exact same thing with really small numbers. Think about 0.00097. Again we just count the zeroes (4 not 3). 0.00097 = 9.7 * 10^-4.

Good so far? If I did this too confusedly and you need something explained better just leave a comment.

Ok so three last things:

1) The rules for multiplying and dividing with scientific notation. When you multiply the coefficients and add the exponents.
For example (4*10^8) * (9*10^3) = (4*9) * 10^(8+3) = 36 * 10^11 = 3.6 * 10^12 is about 4*10^12. Cool?
And for dividing we divide the coefficients and subtract the exponents. Like (9*10^13) / (3*10^7) = (9/3) * 10^(13-7) = 3*10^6.

2) 10^0 = 1. Anything to the power zero is 1.
3) We're going to be taking alot of averages. We'll be guessing things and be saying things like, "well... 10,000 is definitely too big but 1 is way too small." So we will want to take the average between them. BUT notice the average of 10,000 and 1 is (10,000 + 1)/2 = 5,000.5. Well that's stupid. If you round 5,000.5 it's just 10,000. That's just the big number!!! 5000.5 is like 5000 times bigger than our small lower bound and only a factor of two smaller than our upper bound. Averaging isn't going to work.

When dealing with really big numbers and really small numbers taking the normal/everyday average isn't the right thing to do. What we really have to do is take the geometric mean. This is a good average for when you are dealing with big and small numbers. The actual definition of the geometric mean is that you multiply the two numbers and take the square root. But square roots are hard and we are doing this all in our heads so the greatest trick in the whole world which I learned from Guesstimation is how to take the approximate geometric mean. To take the approximate geometric mean just average the coefficients and average the exponents.
The geometric mean of 1 (10^0) and 10,000 (10^4) is ((1+1)/2) * 10^((0+4)/2) = 1*10^2 = 100. 100 is a good in between number if 10,000 is your high guess and 1 is your low guess.
Another example, the geometric mean of 4*10^17 and 8*10^5 is about 6*10^11 (because 6 is the average of 4 and 8 and 11 is the average of 17 and 5).
If the sum of the exponents is odd. There is a rule. You must decrease the exponent by 1 making it even and multiply the coefficients by 3. For example, the geometric mean of 1 and 10^3 is 3*10^1 = 30. The reason for this is because when you average the exponents you get a something and a half. An exponential of 0.5 or 1/2 is exactly the same as square root. And the square root of 10 is 3.16 blah blah blah or just 3. If that's confusing, don't worry about why. Just follow the simple rules for geometric mean and we will get some really magical answers from very little information at all.

That was a long post but we need to know all that. Tomorrow I'm going to do a non-superhero one with you and when you see this in action it will make a lot of sense and you will probably be wowed (maybe not but I was).

Fermi Problems and Batman

2009-06-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

Batman is the world's greatest detective. And so it's time that I start to develop detective skills but how to start? Do I start with a criminology text book or try to master forensics or just buy a fingerprint kit?

I'm not sure but I think I need more basic skills than that first. Just logic skills. Like Sherlock Holmes. Holmes once said, "From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other." Moving forward from this thought I'm going to take you through a couple of Fermi Problems.

Fermi problems aren't Holmesian deduction but they are a method of "scientific guessing". By making good estimates of things that we already know (things that are common knowledge) we will realize that if we think about it we can have a good estimate about something we thought would be impossible to guess.

It's an estimating technique that will allow us to make good "guesses" very quickly and with very little information about things which would seem impossible to compute by people who have never learned this.

For someone like Batman this kind of skill would be invaluable. I have no doubt that Batman has wired his mind to operate this way.

I practiced this from a book called Guesstimation by Lawrence Weinstein (click on that link) and John Adam. Some of the stuff we'll look at are inspired by a question or two in their book but with a superhero twist. It's a great book by the way. If you have fun with these Fermi problems then I'd highly recommend it. The other place of inspiration will be from a book called The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios. Some of these problems will definitely involve physics but it will be the most minor physics. Kakalios uses these types of questions to teach physics but really it's not such hard stuff so I'm going to assume that if you haven't taken a high school physics course that I'll be able to teach it to you as we go.

BUT the pro at this, the man whom the entire method is named after is Enrico Fermi. This man was the prototypical physicist. I don't know what to say about him in a half a paragraph but... wow. He was legendary for being able to figure things out in his head from what other people thought was no information at all. Classic Fermi questions he estimated by this method that we are going to learn include:

How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?
How many blades of grass are there on your front lawn?
What is the ratio of paved to unpaved surface area in California?

I'll post a blurb on the how us would-be-Batmans will solve Fermi problems, and then post questions every other day and a solutions the following day. I hope that you guys have as much fun with these as I did (they're all done but scribbled on napkins and notes and stuff but not typed).

PS Once you start to get the hang of these throw out your own comic book based ones and let's see if we can solve them together.

The Brave and the Bould

2009-06-11T22:16:00.000-07:00

WOW. Bouldering was amazing. I had so much fun. And my toes hurt so much.

We drove out and hiked in. At first we found many rock formations that weren’t tall enough or were just too boring. But eventually we found this boulder that looked pretty good. Unfortunately, the rock wasn’t very great on the one side and the other was very damp (it was a pretty moist day). But we’d found the right area. So we hiked around a bit looking for the perfect face. We didn’t ever find the perfect one but we did eventually settle on a wall. It needed cleaning and neither of us brought a brush (you use a metal brush like you would use on a BBQ to clean dirt, moss and other slippery substances from the visage) but we decided that that would just have to be part of the challenge today.

So we tied up our shoes and positioned the drop mat. This is my only complaint about the shoes I chose. Lace-up shoes take a significant amount of time to tie-up and untie if you ever want to give your poor feet a break. If I had chosen slip-on type shoes, I could have taken them off while I was spotting.

There were two routes up. The easy one was more than doable by me on my first time out but it did take me a couple of tries. Falling off the face is not nearly as bad as I expected. Your partner watches you as you climb and if you fall he’ll break your descent by catching you. This isn’t a falling-damsel-Superman-type save but rather you let the person’s legs land on the mat and get your hands under their arms. By catching their upper body you make sure that they don’t hit their head on any nearby rocks.

The second route was far more challenging. Although my partner made it up a few times, I could never get past a certain point. I tried and tried but I think it was just a touch too challenging. Luckily, the guy I was climbing with is very patient and a great teacher. I’m determined to make it to the top next time we go out there.

I was in pretty good shape after the climb (sore toes and feet and one bloody knee) so we continued to explore the area. It turns out that there are a couple of other pretty good looking climbs nearby and one amazing looking overhang.

I’m excited to get back out there and my climbing partner has promised to show me some of the other spots in the city’s immediate vicinity.

PS Apparently climber culture is filled with lingo and jargon.

Bouldering Batman

2009-06-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

It’s only been one day since I bought my shoes but this evening a more experienced friend and I are going to drive out to the area I explored on my bike last weekend and see what’s out there for climbing.

Bat-Boots

2009-06-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I biked across town to the largest sporting store in the city and bought a pair of rock climbing shoes. Oh, man are they uncomfortable. They are supposed to be really tight and mine are (I hope tight enough). But it’s a good thing that I knew exactly what I wanted because the service was really weak and I didn’t get much help.

So what exactly did I look for in a shoe? Price. Since I’m brand new to this, I don’t need the best gear. Plus, I need to have enough money for any other projects that I have on the go for this Building Batman. I expect Jiu Jitsu to cost a bit. The shoes that I settled on are a pair of Mad Rock. I hope they’re what the doctor ordered.

Let There be Sanity

2009-06-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

The Source has posted another image of Batgirl. Am I the only one praying it's not Babs? I hear a lot of people who would or wouldn't want it to be Cassandra but please God let it not be Barbara. Yes, she was the best but her crippling was such a daring development of the character. Please don't let them just erase all that. She works so well as Oracle both for her own character and as a part of the Bat-family.

That's a lot of miles...

2009-06-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

This weekend I spent a lot of time on my bike. Friday I did a 16 mile bike ride, Saturday a hard 25 mile ride and then on Sunday a final 25 miles but at a much easier pace. This wasn't just to get in better shape but also to explore potential bouldering sites outside of town. One of the locations has real potential but I think that before I can start climbing there I will have to be less exhausted from the bike trip by the time I make it out.

P.S. Batman doesn't bike. Batman flies. In a flying car. Everyone knows that - except The History of the Batmobile site which is uncharacteristically days behind the the current Batmobile (Batmobile iterations must be recorded on a day by day basis since it's changed so often).

Batman and Robin #1

2009-06-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

I don't usually do comic book reviews. Hell, lately I don't usually post at all. Maybe you couldn't tell but I do actually read Batman comics. I try my best to buy bound editions after I have read enough reviews rather than risk getting stuck in a crummy story but I often have one or two serial titles that I'm following. Lately, it was Gotham After Midnight and RIP. RIP was well... was... despicable and Gotham After Midnight was ok but I really wish it had been more of a mystery. The story gimmick was to present an unknown character - a new villain who's secret identity was most obviously closely tied to Batman but who was unknown to all the story's characters and to the reader. But then instead of making it a mystery story with clues throughout the title, writer Steve Niles produced only one single character the villain could possibly be, left no clues at all and then had Batman deduce the entire thing in the final issue. It was kind of a disappointment.

Anyway, none of the new Batman titles on DC's lineup really interested me this year except Detective Comics which will be headlining Kate Kane. I have high hopes for this run. The promotional material is stunning.

And then there's Batman and Robin. Batman and Robin. Batman and Robin by Grant Morrison. Batman and Robin by the man who killed Batman (and I don't mean wrote the story in which Batman died) the last time he touched the character. Batman and Robin starring Damian Wayne as the new Boy Wonder.

Oh God. Just let me die now.

BUT drawn by Frank Quitely. ...

...

Oh man. Now I have a conflict. All Star Superman was so good. I even liked JLA: Earth 2. When Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely work together it's such magic. Now I know that some people don't like Frank Quitely's work. I've heard it said that it's distracting (whatever that means for a comic book) and also that it's just uninteresting but personally I'm a fan.

So I said to myself "I'll buy issue #1. Issue #1 only. If I'm not immediately won over that's it. No more chances, Mr. Morrison."

Conclusion: I have a new conflict: This title is so great that I must decide if I'm going to keep buying the monthly issues or wait until the run is done and buy the bound edition that is sure to follow?

So to actually review the issue:

BOOM BOOM. The tone is effectively set by the very first panel. Sound effects are written out BUT this isn't the POW SLAM BEEBOB sound effects of the campy Batman television series. In a very neat manner Quitely has magically incorporated them into the art. The BOOMs for explosions are formed by the explosion itself. The BWKSSSssssss of a rocket is in the rocket's exhaust. SPLASH is spelt out in the waves. This isn't new (Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100 immediately comes to mind) but it is the perfect fit for this crazy Batman title. Another reviewer summed it up as follows: "Silver age wackiness with modern sensibility." Sure we have a frogman as the villain but he's a drug dealer. Although, I think Batman should be as real world and gritty as possible, I do have a soft spot for things like this series or the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon.

The writing is just as perfect. The otherworldlyness of an upside-down dynamic duo is wonderful to read. Nothing is as it should be. Batman is encouraging and optimistic while Robin is curt, confident and arrogant. Although Quitely's visualization of Dick Grayson in Batman's costume does not vary significantly enough from Bruce's physique, Morrison's dialog is extremely differentiating. He never lets you forget that it is Dick under the cowl not Bruce. Even more so with Damien. In fact, it appears as if Morrison is on a crusade to redeem Damien in the eyes of readers. That's not to say that Damian isn't still a completely spoiled brat but with Bruce out of the picture it is apparent that Damien and Bruce possess very similar characters. Morrison even has Alfred comment on the similarity while he and Dick close down shop at Wayne manor and move operations to the Wayne Foundation.

A couple of details here. (1) Getting them out of the Batcave is a good idea. It distances this team from the original. (2) When they pass the Wayne family cemetery, is that an unmarked grave stone in the shape of the Batsymbol? (3) Have you ever googled Building Batman before? Try it. Notice the second site listed: An AT&T building that is often called the Batman Building. Now look again at Quitely's Wayne Foundation. Am I the only one seeing similarities here?

A couple of last things. Before the issue ends we are reintroduced to a new villain: a butcher in a pigs mask (It's ironic. Yes, I get it, Mr. Morrison). This closing scene is quite disturbing which hearkens back to the "modern sensibilities" comment. I really didn't expect a story as brightly colored as this to be able to capture the darkness of the Batman universe but this is one creepy villain.

We then get two sets of images from upcoming issues which tell us some important things:
(1) That funny black thing on Robin's cape is actually a hood.
(2) Arrogant Robin is going to get a humiliating moment of failure.
(3) Damien gets an "I quit" / "run away from home" style story.
(4) The daughter at the end of this issue becomes the Robin-esque equivalent for Red Hood.
(5) The Batman and Robin and Detective Comics stories eventually intersect.
(6) Wayne manor only has only two locks. One of which is a simple tumbler. The other is only a warded lock. (Oh and Dr. Hurt survived the helicopter crash).

Training - but not posting

2009-06-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the large delay between posts. I know we all hate it when a blogger stops you from reading your favorite blog for an entire month (this is your favorite blog ever, right?). I've been working on another project and it took all of my attention. Sorry about that.

BUT although I haven't been posting, I have been keeping up with my training. In fact, I've started a whole pile of new enterprises. Firstly, I've started doing chin-ups and pull-ups everyday instead of so many push-ups in response to a comment by Thelonious_Nick on an old post. On top of that, I have been jogging three mornings a week, biking twice a week and swimming twice a week. All and all, I have never been in such good shape. As often as possible I am doing my flexibility training.

Why all of this exercise? Well first because Batman is supposed to be at the peak of the human condition. Now I'm not ever going to claim that I'll be in an athlete's shape but I would like to be in better shape than most of the people I meet on the street. And second because the next few Bat-skills that I'll be adding to my arsenal of superheroic arts are all physical.

I've found a friend who boulders. This will be great! Batman can ascend the highest skyscrapers with ease. I bet Batman is one mean wallclimber. We haven't gone yet but I'll let you know when we do and tell you how it went. Hopefully, I can get competent.

The second thing to learn is a martial art. I've been trying to figure out what to do first but wanted to go with someone. I finally found a pal who would like to learn Jiu-Jitsu. There's a school near our neighborhood. Hopefully, we can get in and learn a bunch. I hope that it's a good martial art to start with. I don't plan to master Jiu-Jitsu just learn the basics.

So those are my summer plans. Oh wait! There's two more things. I've bought a copy of Gray's Anatomy (standard textbook on anatomy from the turn of the last century - it's ok that it's old. The human body hasn't changed much over the last hundred years). I've been reading through it and making notes. Batman, always the scientist, would tackle his physical training with the precision of a surgeon. If I'm going to train my body, then I'll understand it too. I'll write you brief synopsizes of each component of the body. I promise that these won't be super in depth or boring. I'll spice them up with true comic book showmanship but they will be accurate and hopefully point those of you who want to know more in the right direction.

I'm also learning French (I know maybe not the most practical language but it is a language and if I'm going to learn multiple foreign languages in my life then it's time to start). Finally, I have some brain exercises that I'll be introducing to start getting the detective part of this project rolling.

So lot's of what I have been doing and what I will be doing for this season.

And finally a promise. I'm dedicated to posting more often than I have been. In fact, I'll have a post for tomorrow finishing up lock-picking once and for all.

Gotch Ya

2009-05-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

The May 2009 issue of Wired magazine had a write-up about spy gear. You can read it online. The item on their list that really attracted me was the pocket grappling hook (although the bulletproof dress shirt is pretty cool).

The collapsible aluminum and steel grappling hook is small enough to be called pocket sized, it can act as water proof container and only costs $30.

Holy crap, Batman! It's perfect. A must have.

This isn't a grappling hook for swinging from. It's designed for snagging trip wires and tearing down barbed wire. For something that I would actually consider climbing with check out Capewell's Retractable Grappling Hook. That's something I would actually expect Batman to use for scaling buildings.

Of course, we all know about Batman's secret superpower: his grappling hook. It's way too small to make any sense and to pull him at those speeds! Although, grappling guns that amazing don't actually exist, there are line launchers such as the one in the ResQmax kit. They don't seem to come much smaller than that and it just launches the line, either by compressed air or a small rocket. If you want to be mechanically pulled up you need a completely separate tool. If you thought the grappling hook launcher was big, you'll be very surprised by the size of existing motorized hoists, or ascenders. A company started by some MIT alumni, called Atlas Devices, builds these. They are simple (apparently the prototypes were built out of power drills) but big and probably pretty loud.

The really long, video about the pocket grappling hooks by Maratac:

The ascender by Atlas:

Oh and if you want to read some more facts about grappling hooks check out the eHow articles (don't forget the Related Articles on the side)

Picking Tumblers: Part II

2009-05-12T22:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, so you've had way too many days to think about how a pin tumbler lock works.

First and foremost know that picking a lock requires TWO (count 'em: two) tools and not just one as you may have been mislead into believing by Hollywood. You need both a pick and a torque wrench.

Picking locks depends on the imperfections in machining the locks. If a lock was made perfectly it could never be picked. But as it stands, the machinists' imperfections mean that the lock has a little give. Remember that the springs pushed the driverpins down and they in turn push the key pins down. When a torque is applied to the plug by a key (or something else, say maybe a torque wrench, perhaps?), the driverpins bind unless lifted to the exact same height as the shearline. BUT (here's the beauty of it all) the holes that are drilled can't be in a perfectly straight line (nothing's perfect - the impression can be as small as 0.0002in but even that is enough). Because of that imperfection, one pin must be first and only that pin is actually binding! The rest of the pins are still loose and free to be pushed up and down. The hull and the plug crimp only that one driverpin in place and stop the lock from rotating.

If you apply a GENTLE torque to the plug with the torque wrench and then go in the keyway with a thin hooked tool (called a hook pick) and push up on the pin that is stuck, you can push until the drivingpin is lifted above the shearline. All, of a sudden the plug will rotate just a bit. If you stop pushing up, you will find that the bottom keypin is free to drop because the drivingpin is no longer pushing on it. When you pushed it up, it passed the shearline and was no longer in the way. Because you were applying a GENTLE torque, the plug turned until the next pin crimped. This created a tiny ledge for the first pin to rest on. You can now move onto the next pin.

If you do this for each and every pin, eventually nothing will be in the way. Once that last pin is set the plug is free to rotate all the way and you've keylessly unlocked it.

Note 1) Gentle was the key word. Gentle GENTLE. GENTLE!!! If you turn the torque wrench too hard you can cause more than one pin to bind. Even metal is somewhat malleable, the pins might give a bit and more than one may bind jamming the lock.

Note 2) When pushing the pins up with the pick, you have to be careful because you want the drivingpin to just barely get above the shearline. If you keep pushing up after that, the pins will rise further and the keypin will bind in the shearline and that's no good. You've got the keypin to bind instead of the driverpin, good job but you still can't turn the plug any further.

Note 3) After setting a top drivingpin make sure that the bottom keypin falls freely. If it stays up, you pushed too hard and you have to relieve some tension from the torque wrench. Don't be surprised if you have to start all over again if this happens.

Note 4) Of course, you can't see what's going on inside the keyway. You have to feel it. Be slow. Be gentle. You have to get a feel for how the pins respond when they are binding, when they are being pushed by a drivingpin and when they have freely fallen on to the ward. You will be able to feel (or maybe even hear) a small click when the top pin is set.

Note 5) Every imperfection in manufacturing is different so the order of setting will always be different for every lock.

Note 6) Some locks have one way that the key must turn. Turn the torque wrench that way. It sucks to work for a long time and then realize that you've just been rotating the plug the wrong way. That happened to me in Pittsburgh.

Note 7) Locks are often outside or other places where the elements can degrade them. Grease and dirt often clog the lock cylinder. Cleaning the lock with gasoline or WD40 or something can really make your job easier.

If you're interested in this you might want to check out "Unauthorized Entry and Physical Security Collection"(torrent), a torrent that can be found on many archives. Also, the online MIT guide is good. And never skip a wiki-type introduction. Personally I used the book "Visual Guide to Lock Picking" but having now successfully picked a couple of locks, I can whole heartedly agree with the author, Mark McCloud, who repeats again and again that what you need is practice and not being an author who makes anything from my writings, I can say what he probably really wanted to: "You don't need a book. Just a lock-pick set, an old lock (surprisingly door dead bolts are easier than pad locks) and maybe some helpful hints like I've tried to give on this blog or like you can find on YouTube."

Visual learners should definitely check out YouTube tutorials. The first ones to come up are like Simple Lock-Picking Guide, Whiteboard masterlock lockpicking tutorial basic how to pick or Lock picking tutorial.

Picking Tumblers: Part I

2009-05-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

We are going to start with tumbler locks. They aren't the easiest lock to pick and their not the hardest - they are the most common. But in order to pick the lock, we have to understand how the lock works. It's like old school hacking: we are bypassing security by taking advantage of internal weaknesses in how the system works. Tumbler locks are made up of only a few parts: the key goes in the keyway (the keyhole) so that it can turn the cylinder which is called the plug (Right? The key turns. Got it.). The plug is housed in the main casing.

Next part, the plug has a holes drilled in it and these continue up into the casing. Each of thise holes has a spring in it. The spring pushes two little pins down into the plug. The top pins (which are between the spring and bottom pin) are called drivingpins and they are all the same length. They push the lower pins (called the keypins) down. These keypins are all different lengths. They rest on a little ledge called a ward. Pull your keys out of your pocket and look at one. It has that little canal that runs all the way from the tip to the handle of the key. The ward slides in the canal. The point of the ward is to be a ledge that the keypins rest on when there is no key in the keyway.

So that's all the pieces of the lock. Now how does it work. I said that all the keypins were different lengths. Why? Well, what else are different heights? Answer: the teeth of the key.

So here is how it works. The key goes into the keyway. The notches and teeth push the pins up to exactly the right height so that each and every one of the top drivingpins is lifted (by the keypins) to the same height (exactly to the same height as the separation between the casing and the plug). This is the most important part to understand. When the key is inserted the gap between each and every keypin and drivingpin lines up with the gap between the hull casing and the plug. This separation is called the shear line. Once they are all lined up the key can turn and unlock the door. Tada! The mechanism of a tumbler lock explained!

Check out these wikis if you want to read about the mechanism of tumbler locks again. (Let's be honest. It's where I got the images)
Wikivisual
Wikipedia
Wapedia
BambooWeb Dictionary
BookRags

Let this settle for a day or so and then I'll post a How-To tutorial for picking tumbler locks.

Learning From the Best

2009-05-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

Last night I taught a group of 3 friends how to pick locks. By the end of the night, each and every one of them had picked every lock I owned. I was really impressed.

After that victory, I thought I'd try to teach my friend's very young brother this afternoon. Even though I didn't think he would be able to, he eventually got one of the padlocks. I was even more impressed. He then proceeded to break the pick on the next lock I gave him. opps. Oh well I suppose.

This all reminds me: I haven't given a How-To about lock picking on my blog yet. I'll create one for the next post.

Speechless

2009-05-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Last night I had the chance to paint the face of a mime.

So? Batman does not paint faces, you say. That's true but he's got to be an expert actor to convince people of his Bruce Wayne charade. Plus, Bruce Wayne is one of the most recognizable faces in the DCU yet he wanders around Gotham city as Matches Malone without anyone being the wiser.

Batman's makeup skills are da'bomb.

And as you can see by these pictures, mine aren't so bad either. I may not be the next Barrett Kean but it's not so bad.

I'll try to do more stagemakeup in the future sometime. I'd love to learn impersonation but I don't know how to go about learning.

P.S. Sorry for the long delay in posting. I'll post what I've been doing this month over the next few days.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

2009-04-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

The webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal published a cartoon involving Batman that I thought you might enjoy:

Which is always followed by a follow-up comic:

Project Rooftop

2009-03-30T06:35:00.001-07:00

Maybe if you've been reading Building Batman for a long time you've started to notice that not all the picture of Batman are canonical-ish. If there is one thing I love more than comics, it's fans taking a character and making it their own.

There's a conflict in the stories that we might call "modern myths". Maybe the biggest modern myth stories are Luke Skywalker's hero quest to save the galaxy or the paradox of an all-america savior who does no wrong while fighting the never-ending-good-fight yet is equally just a mild man who struggled for years to get the girl across the desk from him to notice. The conflict is this: as "myths" these stories must be widely owned by many people but as "modern" they are actaully copyrighted controlled material owned by someone. The less centralized Superman franchize may be more myth than Star Wars because of the army of creative people who have all added or perturbed his story in their own way over the years but it still makes me extremely happy when fans stand up and make the myths their own. It's why I check Wayne Manor everyday even though I know he only updates near holidays (come on April Fools day, come on April Fools day) and why I wish BBWW would start posting again.

AND it's why I really wanted to tell you about Project Rooftop. This is a website that hosts contests for redesigning superheroes' costumes. They were inspired by Andi Watson's Batgirl meme. With Battle for the Cowl going on in the Bat-verse, they started this contest asking for people to redesign the Batman costume for "his most likely successor, Dick". They claim they got over 100 entries (I would love to scroll through all those) and their finalists are super cool.
But they haven't just done Batman. Check-out the righthand side links to past contests and then answer me this: why is it so easy to find really cool, really good redesigns of Wonder Woman by fans but DC still fails day by day to do anything worthwhile with the character?

Hotel Hospitality

2009-03-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

I mentioned that I'm visiting Pittsburgh right now. I brought my lock-pick set and some pad-locks with me for relaxation and fun. When I got to my hotel room, I found the little lock on the minibar. Oh ya, baby.

I had alot of trouble at first. A painful amount of trouble. I couldn't figure out what was so hard about this pitiful little lock. Was it some other kind of locking mechanism than any I had seen so far, something that looks like a tumbler but isn't? The pins were really standard looking and feeling.

The answer was no: It was a regular lock but the key turned the other way than I expected. Oh well. Once I knew that, the lock was super easy. I raked it in seconds and picked it very quickly.

I still have to present to you all how to lock-pick yourselves and I do promise to do that very soon.

Nocturnal Knight

2009-03-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

So I made it. It's still fairly early for most Friday night parties but the people I went with were leaving so I felt justified in calling it a night.

So there's the end of it. All in all, it wasn't so much trouble. It doesn't feel healthy and I find it hard to believe that a person could cope as a useful member of the superhero community if they didn't get proper sleep.

I went out for diner with a girl and almost fell a sleep on her. She definitely noticed how tired I was and I had to tell her that I didn't sleep much but when we went out after to a more active location and were out with a large group of people whom I didn't know as well I could function well enough to not stand out.

So in conclusion:
On Tuesday I had a normal day but when it came to sleep I stayed up and only slept 4 hours before getting up on Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning was just another day. Again, I only slept 4 hours. I got up at about 7AM Thursday morning and haven't slept since. It is 11:30 Friday and I am about to go to sleep so let's say I have gone 41 hours without sleep.

Oh ya, I forgot to mention I have to be on a plane to Pittsburgh tomorrow morning at 6 A.M.

Daybreak

2009-03-13T03:10:00.000-07:00

The sun just started to come up. I've made it through the night. I guess that means the part that requires willpower is done. Once the day officially begins, I won't have the opportunity to sleep.

The combination of staying up late and staring at a computer screen is really making my eyes water.

The worst thing is how my stomach feels. It's not queezy but it feels really gross. It's the coffee. The coffee must irritate my stomach.

I went for another walk but didn't feel rejuvenated at all. All my energy is fake energy: the determination to get through the night and caffeine.

And I'm freezing! Why does being tired make me so cold?

Quarter to One

2009-03-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

I cracked open the first bottle of Coke. Oh man.

Sugar Fiend

2009-03-12T19:26:00.000-07:00

I came home late from work. It's about 10:30. The cool walk felt great. I was completely revitalized... Until I got into my nice warm home. Nobody is around and it is really quiet. I'm going to put on the radio despite the trouble from two nights ago.

Oh and my body is starting to ache. My back has a pain and my muscles are stiff. I'm pretty limber and don't often feel this way.

I have two bottles of coke to help me over the next two nights. I'm not convinced that the sugar will be a good idea in the long run.

Crime Doesn't Sleep

2009-03-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

I think I take back last night's comments. I can definitely tell a difference in the quality of work I'm getting done. I'm wasting time. Things that shouldn't be difficult are taking me forever. I'm having alot of trouble with simple concepts and have notice myself slipping into thoughtless gazes. I've had 6 hours of sleep over the last two nights and I haven't even gotten to my sleepless night. Plus I still have to get through the evening.

The work day hasn't been so bad. Lots was happening and as long as I can keep my mind off my fatigue then it doesn't bother me much. I have to stay at work really late but that's ok because I'm not sure what I'll do when I go home.

Sleepless Nights

2009-03-12T05:03:00.000-07:00

It's almost time to go start my day but I've already been up for 3 hours. I drank two pots of coffee --> I got up early so that I only got 4 hours of sleep. I think that I'm going to regret all the coffee.
I just kept drinking.

It was a rough night but luckily I had things to do. I've been working on this computer program for quite sometime and it needs to be done really soon. So I'm almost grateful for this extra time.

The worst part about staying up this late is the late night radio programs. Why do they play that kind of music? Once you get to the morning shows things improve but I think I've stick to my ipod tomorrow night.

Who Watches...?

2009-03-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

I saw the Watchmen film today. My comment on the matter?

Rorschach uses the same lock-picking set as I do! It's the case that I noticed. He uses it when he and Dan are in Veidt's office. Watch for it in the film.

In other news, the day wasn't so bad. I was tired but I've been more drowsy and it will only get worse tonight and tomorrow.

The First Morning

2009-03-11T06:45:00.000-07:00

I ended up getting less than four hours: I only got two. Although , I think I probably dozed in the shower for twenty minutes - when I noticed I was still there the water was cold.

It's not so bad yet. I'm drinking alot of coffee but that's not much of a problem.

Sleep Deprivation

2009-03-10T20:54:00.000-07:00

Reasonably, Batman does not go out on patrol every single night, all night long. It's pretty unbelievable. However, he may go out most nights and he almost definitely has a completely inverted sleeping schedule. He most likely sleeps during the day and goes to work as a hero at night.

That being said, there must be times when Bruce Wayne must go out during the day.
As a playboy he can probably get away with mostly being seen at evening events but as the owner of a multi-billion dollar corporation there must be times when even the irresponsible and uninterested Bruce can't get out of a lunch or breakfast meeting.

Therefore, Batman must often but perhaps not regularly, go entire days without sleep.

This is my next experiment for Building Batman. I propose to remain awake and functional for 48 straight. It's probably pretty rare that Batman goes longer than that. An argument that he doesn't may be that he keeps his physical self in peak condition and therefore must see the value in self maintenance. That doesn't mean he sleeps long though in a crisis situation.

So here's what I think is reasonable. I'll get 4 hours of sleep between Tuesday and Wednesday (that's tonight). 4 hours between Wednesday and Thursday. I won't sleep at all Thursday night. Some friends of mine are planning to go out Friday and so I will go with them. I won't leave until the group disperses. After that I will allow myself to sleep as long as necessary.

I don't think this is very extreme and is definitely within reach.

Bike Lock and Coffee

2009-03-04T04:52:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness that I now use coffee strategically instead of drinking a cup a day (here and here). During busy times (like now) coffee becomes a valuable ally in my war on... time.

That being said I have been able to pick a few locks when I catch a free moment. I can pick an old bike lock in under a minute. It's was no problem - probably because it was so old and has a lot of give. It is definitely the easiest one yet.

The brand new pad lock I was telling you about, is terribly frustrating. I got it that first time very quickly but have not gotten it again since! My front door still takes time but I can consistently get it.

What I need now are more old locks that I can practice on.

Does anybody have any ideas about that? I don't want to go buy 10 brand new ones because a) they're harder and b) buying 10 locks for no purpose except to pick them seems more than little wasteful.

PS You really should be keeping up to date with the_dark_cat's Welcome to Wayne Manor.

Fluke

2009-03-01T21:57:00.000-08:00

Tonight night while watching an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold I picked a padlock. It was pretty cool. It took me just under 7 minutes BUT I think that was a fluke since I couldn't repeat it in the duration of the show. We'll see if I can repeat it again tomorrow.

Bruce Picks Away

2009-02-28T07:14:00.000-08:00

Here's a few pics of me picking the deadbolt of my door.

Making Mr. Miracle

2009-02-27T17:48:00.000-08:00

Someone broke into my house yesterday.

ME, BITCHES!

It took an half of an hour. Not more or less an half hour like less than an hour or more than a few minutes but exactly 30 minutes. That's as long as a TV show or it takes to make a decent supper or... well I'm sure you all know how long an half hour is but, but, but I'm just excited. This was my first time sitting down with them. I think I've found my calling - maybe I shouldn't be practicing to become Batman but rather should be trying to make myself an illusionist like Mr. Miracle.

Picks in the Post

2009-02-25T19:49:00.000-08:00

I got my lock-pick set this morning. It's gorgeous. It's a 20 piece lock-pick set of from LockPickShop.com although that was my mistake - since ordering it, I found out that the maker, SouthOrd sells the exact same set for $10 cheaper than LockPickShop.

The MPXS-20 is a set of 14 picks and five torsion wrenches (there's also a key extractor - also known as tweezers). The picks come in a case which I like because it has a zipper rather than a button which most seem to have. These picks are called Slim, meaning that they are for narrow U.S. locks or European and Japanese locks. Narrower seemed like a better choice than wider to me.

The only other set that I really considered purchasing was the PXS-14 but it wasn't on sale when I ordered.

Batman Haute Couture

2009-02-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

Masked vigilantes are en vogue this year. These cowled ladies showed off Narciso Rodriguez fall collection in New York last week. The blog Red Carpet Fashion Awards aptly identified these bucket hats as Batman-esque. I'm looking forward to high-fashion renditions of Batbelts, myself.

Suspicion

2009-02-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

I stopped by a local locksmith's today to see if I could buy a set of picks locally instead of over the Internet. The lady who was working the shop came around from the other side of the shop. Because I'm fairly young, I made sure to use all the lingo that I knew when asking her if she had any. I asked if she had an torsion wrenches and picks for keyless entry. I was shocked at how quickly her attitude changed.

She told me, "We don't carry that kind of thing here" and when I asked her if she knew someone who might, she said "No" and returned to the other side of the store leaving me standing alone in her shop - a surprising thing to do to someone you suspect is a thieving criminal.

I've read in the Visual Guide to Lock Picking that picking a lock is not exactly the best method of fast, keyless entry. Drilling sounds easy or acid or if it's a pad lock simply cutting the BAR. That being said, I'm sure that there's a lot of superstitious cowardly thugs who could think of all kinds of crimes to commit.

Hopefully I'll tell you about bumping, shimming, skeleton keys and other keyless entry techniques beyond picking - the right tool for the job, they say.

Rolling Hitch

2009-02-20T07:28:00.000-08:00

Good job, Plastic Man. You'll be able to sell that tape on e-bay or maybe bring it to the JLA's monthly poker nights.

It's very easy to make the clove hitch a little more secure. By wrapping the working end around the post one more time, we have a Rolling Hitch. Because this double turn reduces slipping, this knot is useful for situations where the pull is along the same direction as the post.

1) Pass the line around the post, going over the standing end once you make it around.
2) Make a second identical turn, which follows the first turn.
3) Finish the knot in the same way we finished the Clove Hitch: with a half hitch
a) Pass the line around the post on the other side of the standing end.
b) Feed the working end underneath the third loop.
5) Cinch the knot.

Clove Hitch

2009-02-19T06:43:00.000-08:00

Sometimes a magic lasso is just the best fashion accessory that one could ask for.

Today's knot is the Clove Hitch. This is a great and super easy way to tie a line. It's so unbelievably fast.

1) Pass the line around the post or bar or whatever.
2) Pass the line around the post on the other side of the standing end.
3) Feed the working end underneath the second loop.
4) Cinch the knot.

The things that you should keep in mind are: a) leave a bit line past the knot since it might slip a touch before catching b) if wiggling the standing part will loosen this knot.