Travels and Images
WEEK 47 2006
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Saturday 25 November
2006
Saturday
- my friend Tim reminds ne via email that I actually have two boats. I'm not entirely sure that is something to be thankful for. Actually I want to give my half of the other boat to my brother. Which means he'll have to pay all the slip fees for it :-)
I didn't get down to the boat in Oxnard this weekend, due to the pet
sitting and writing the accursed test plan. But I should have plenty of
comp time for later in the week.
My other brother is back in town, so I'm off pet patrol.
Friday 24 November
2006
Friday - spent most of the day working on the test plan. I was home, and had forgotten how annoying the cats could be when trying to work. Bah. Then there was all the noise from the neighbors. But I did get some work done.
I talked to my Dad. It sounds like Thanksgiving went well. The dog is getting walked multiple times a day.
The plywood cutout of Frosty my brother made, probably 10 years old, is getting a new coat of paint. And new lights?
From Christmas 2000, Frosty's arm, my brother, and Duke
Friday Cat Blogging:
Detail of a cat, Leonardo da Vinci
It's Old Stuff Friday, for some reason.
Firstly, more analysis on the Antikythera Computer.
I've always half suspected it of being a fraud, but apparently not. A
team using three dimensional X-ray imaging has actually resolved the
mechanism. The images - voxels rather than pixels - are much better than the blurry two dimensional images we have seen in the past. And done to such detail that they are able to read the original Greek instructions on corroded, completely buried and obscured dials. Amazing stuff.
Little technology appears out of thin air. (Recall James Burke's excellent Connections?)
If there is one Antikythera Computer, then there should be two, or
four, and any number of ancestral and descendant devices. But, as far
as I know, none have ever been found. Which is why I am suspicious, a
little, still.
(Connections, oddly, doesn't seem to be available on DVD or even VHS. Later sequels are, Connections II and III, but not the original.)
Secondly, a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit at the Palm Spring Airport Museum.
It sounds interesting. Maybe I'll make a road trip. If I knew a private
pilot we could fly there :-) I seem to recall reading about an
attempted re-creation of some of Da Vinci's mechanisms. At first they
didn't work, but eventually they discovered that they had to use the
diagrams as drawn, in particular to use the pointed gear teeth, rather than the modern (and more robust) Involute Tooth. (Though clockmakers do apparently prefer the Cycloidal Tooth, which is more "pointy" )
You'll note that the Antikythera Mechanism has pointed teeth in these neat JAVA applet images at HP.
I suspect this toothiness is all part of the Da Vinci code.
Thursday 23 November 2006
Thursday
- an early post: I hope to spend some time with friends today, since I
couldn't make it north. So, I've friends to be
thankful for, right off the bat. I also have a good job, a home in a nice area, two cars, two cats, a
boat, multiple computers, machine tools, hobbies, piles of unread books, the internet - and my health. Life is good.
When I was looking for "pink stuff" for my upset stomach yesterday
morning I couldn't find any. After considerable searching, I did find a
bottle of Mylanta - but it had expired in July of 1992. There was an unopened travel size bottle of Milk of Magnesia which had expired in January 1993, and some Alka-Seltzer tablets from September 1994.
My friends laugh about finding expired food in my pantry, but there
is
actually a simple and logical explanation for these old nostrums: I
moved into this house in 1994 and this stuff was stored in an unlikely
place during the move, and I had forgotten all about the stash until a
moderately desperate search turned it up. I tossed them, of course, and
bought some new stuff.
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy there is an article about breast implants being back on the market. It starts:
On Friday, the FDA lifted most restrictions
on the sale of silicone breast implants, almost fourteen years after
FDA chairman David Kessler ordered the implants off the markets, in a
decision motivated by politics, not evidence.
Indeed, the end of the FDA ban marks the conclusion of what amounted
to a massive scams. Political activists, politicians, trial lawyers,
and media sensationalists joined forces to promote the view, wholly
lacking in scientific support, that implants caused systemic disease.
Emphasis mine.
This is pretty much my take on the current Global Warming scare,
particularly Anthropogenic Global Warming. Except that it's on a huge
scale - a world wide scam and the costs could be in the hundreds of
billions, possibly trillions, of dollars. Some of the commenters
at VC noticed the similarity as well. One even suggested a better title for the article...
Wednesday 22 November 2006
Wednesday
- no flight. Bah. The aircraft had a problem, so we've knocked off until next week.
Since I've a couple of test plans to update for another project, that
was actually a good thing. I'd planned on visiting my father, but
didn't want to go up on Wednesday afternoon and had to cancel out.
And, perhaps, it was a good thing in another way. I wasn't feeling too good today - I'd an
upset stomach and was popping pink tablets before the expected flight
time. It would have made for an unpleasant flight (and drive). Instead I worked the
rest of the day and then stopped at my brothers' for an hour or so in the evening, to
watch his dog, cats, fish and turtles.
And now I seem to have a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat...
Book #48 was Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail,
by Stephen Brown. A good book. I knew of scurvy because of my naval and
sailing reading, and something of its effects and of it's
cure, but had no idea how horrible it really was in the end stages. And the book is something of an exercise in frustration - people knew of the cure hundreds of years
before it was finally accepted in the late 1790's. It makes one wish
for a time machine, so that you can go back and grab the doctors of the
time by their lapels and shake them.
The concept of vitamin deficiency, of anything remotely resembling
modern medical thought, simply did not exist. What did exist was handed
down from the ancient Greeks (the four humours theory), and interpreted according to the fads and fallacies of the day. It makes one appreciate
what a huge leap forward science took in the1800's, with the rise of
the atomistic and chemical theories of nature, and the equally important practice of
experimentation and testing.
The mariner mentioned in the title, by the way, was Lieutenant (and later Post Captain) James Cook. The 'gentleman' was not Joseph Banks, (see Book Read #1 of 2005), though it easily could have (and probably should have) been.
I say 'good book', but actually it could have done with a bit of
editing. A bit repetitious and uneven, but more than worth the minor
annoyances.
Tuesday 21 November
2006
Tuesday - well, the equipment problem was solved (mostly due to the help of other engineers who took time out from fixing their problems to help me with mine
- thanks, John and Matt, I owe you one!), and we flew again, and
recorded some good data. It was, as expected, a very benign flight.
I was almost too busy to look out the window, which was a pity. I did
put in a few minutes of sight seeing, after the tests were run and we
were on our way back to Edwards AFB. It was late afternoon and we were
over desert mountains to the northeast - very dramatic scenery. Ridge
after ridge, each shadowing the lower part of the next ridge over, but
the tips glowing with the setting sun at the top.
We also flew low, on returning, over the rocket site on Leuhman Ridge, and the Borax mine outside Boron.
Due to clouds we couldn't finish all the points, so we'll fly again tomorrow!
Monday 20 November 2006
Monday - back at work. We flew, with
myself as the flutter engineer in the back of the G3. It was cool -
I've never been in a bizjet before, certainly never as the sole
passenger.
Then again, no pilot has never asked for my "next of kin" just before takeoff, either. Hmmm.
But it was cool - he was joking around because Ops had lost my medical release and didn't notice
until we were waiting at the hammerhead for takeoff clearance. They
found it again, after a few minutes, and agreed that it was OK to
takeoff with me aboard.
My part of the flight didn't go all the well actually, instrumentation
trouble. Other people had experiments on board, and theirs didn't work
either, so I didn't have to feel too bad. But I did have to say "no" to
the pilots, mid flight, when we came up on some flutter clearance runs.
That's my job. I was so busy trying to make
things work that I didn't even notice when a F-18 came along side to
take photographs. I'll have to take a look at their shots, maybe
there's a shot of me, looking down at my terminal (probably scowling).
I'll have to come in early and troubleshoot tomorrow.
Sunday 19 November
2006
Sunday - I finished up most of the boat
electrical work, enough to say that I've actually done it. After all
the fitting out, the measuring and cutting, buying the correct stuff at
the store, buying the really correct stuff at the store, fitting and
making things fit - I tried it out. It all worked well.
Just before I buttoned the boat up I tried the automatic bilge pump, and it didn't work.
After a bit of fiddling about I was just about to hard wire it (the
pump) to a battery when I noticed the problem: I hadn't put the fuse in
the terminal block!
What can I say, except: it was a long day.
Then I picked up tools: a drill, a saw, a multimeter, AWG wire
stripper, dykes, screwdrivers, drop lamps, flashlights, combination
wrenches and all the rest, and put them away. I've now three tool boxes
on the boat, nearly full. And am getting quite an assortment of wire
and stainless steel screws, bolts and nuts. If they don't fit, I keep
them, rather than taking them back. I'll need them someday.
Then I gave the boat a hose down. It was dark, so I don't know how good
the job was, but the boat was getting extremely dirty, from the dew,
the various forest fires, the pollution from the farms and construction
- it has to be an improvement.
