Some basics need explaining, like how is a rubbing plate (the front of the case) an electronic component?

Some years ago I purchased the HDR or Hyperdimensional Resonator from Steven Gibbs. Now I'm a little shocked at how much I paid for it, because even at the old price I couldn't presently afford it, but then I was flush with money and figured, eh, even if it doesn't work it might be fun.

Now I have more time to mess with it, and I've been playing with the concept seriously, originally intending to do a series of ten experiments and see if anything happens. Those who have rapport with the machine report a ten percent success rate, so I thought if I tried ten times and something happened, well, cool.

I've been through six experiments so far, and over half those efforts yielded unusual results. I would not call them spectacular, and only one clearly involved a time jump (if it was actually real) but overall I do think something unusual did happen.

Part of what I don't like about the machine is the weird instruction manual that came with it. In most ways it makes little sense, and I've already mentioned that even basics such as labeling operating controls were simply skipped. Warnings were included about the potential for opening gateways to hell, but no clear alternative was provided. That makes me take the entire system less seriously.

I also purchased one of Gibbs's books -- or pamphlets -- along with the machine. This book describes how to build a gateway portal, the physical structure that forms the other half of the time machine. The book did cost me about twenty dollars and was about a dollar a page, physically just a collection of home-printed sheets with assorted ramblings and sketches. I will not complain about that -- anyone who travels across time must have a permanently scattered consciousness.

I feel a little bit like I've been cheated, however, because the information in the booklet is incomplete and even contradictory, even in basic terms regarding the orientation of the gateway structure. Since the gateway parts resonate in harmony with fundamental energies, orientation is important. Whether the gateway faces north/south or east/west ought to be critical, and the instructions describe both options as correct. If you read other parts of the manual you get the advice that to go into the past you enter from the south towards the north, or to future from the north towards the south. There's nothing consistent there, and now I am complaining because you have no idea how much trouble it was for us to build this thing. Now I'm thinking I have a fifty fifty chance of having done it wrong. Maybe it doesn't matter, but how can I tell?

At present I'm not satisfied with this machine or the literature that came with it, but I do find it interesting. The fundamentals seem to be more magical than electronic, and I'm not against that approach. I do wish it had been more coherently explained.

More about the portal structure soon . . . .