Walther Weed Whacker
Cold, wet, rainy, miserable. It’s late fall / early winter on the Texas Gulf Coast. Temperature in the 50s for the foreseeable future. Add to this that the backyard of Cat Beard Manor has become quite junglefied. The Calla Lilies have encroached the walkway to the back door. I’m carrying in all of the groceries from our Christmas food shopping and getting tired of brushing against the cold wet leaves each time I go in and out the back door.
But wait, I have the Walther® Mach Tac 1 Machete given to me over the summer. Never had a use for it. My trailblazing days are but a distant memory.
It was like attacking warm butter with a searing-hot knife. So very satisfying. Like spindly-legged green zombies hacked off at the ankles. I’ll clear the carnage away later when it’s drier.
See also:
5 Day Forecast
X Marks the Spot
Via email from
X Marks the Spot: Falcon 9 Attempts Ocean Platform Landing
During our next flight, SpaceX will attempt the precision landing of a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time, on a custom-built ocean platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship. While SpaceX has already demonstrated two successful soft water landings, executing a precision landing on an unanchored ocean platform is significantly more challenging.
The odds of success are not great—perhaps 50% at best. However this test represents the first in a series of similar tests that will ultimately deliver a fully reusable Falcon 9 first stage.
Video of previous first stage reentry test with soft water landing
Returning anything from space is a challenge, but returning a Falcon 9 first stage for a precision landing presents a number of additional hurdles. At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (nearly 1 mi/s), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for reentry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm.
To help stabilize the stage and to reduce its speed, SpaceX relights the engines for a series of three burns. The first burn—the boostback burn—adjusts the impact point of the vehicle and is followed by the supersonic retro propulsion burn that, along with the drag of the atmosphere, slows the vehicle’s speed from 1300 m/s to about 250 m/s. The final burn is the landing burn, during which the legs deploy and the vehicle’s speed is further reduced to around 2 m/s.
Landing legs deployed just before soft water landing in the Atlantic Ocean
To complicate matters further, the landing site is limited in size and not entirely stationary. The autonomous spaceport drone ship is 300 by 100 feet, with wings that extend its width to 170 feet. While that may sound huge at first, to a Falcon 9 first stage coming from space, it seems very small. The legspan of the Falcon 9 first stage is about 70 feet and while the ship is equipped with powerful thrusters to help it stay in place, it is not actually anchored, so finding the bullseye becomes particularly tricky. During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within 10km. For this attempt, we’re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10 meters.
A key upgrade to enable precision targeting of the Falcon 9 all the way to touchdown is the addition of four hypersonic grid fins placed in an X-wing configuration around the vehicle, stowed on ascent and deployed on reentry to control the stage’s lift vector. Each fin moves independently for roll, pitch and yaw, and combined with the engine gimbaling, will allow for precision landing – first on the autonomous spaceport drone ship, and eventually on land.
Similar steerable fins can also be seen in this test video:
The attempt to recover the first stage will begin after stage separation, once the Dragon spacecraft is safely on its way to orbit. The concept of landing a rocket on an ocean platform has been around for decades but it has never been attempted. Though the probability of success on this test is low, we expect to gather critical data to support future landing testing.
A fully and rapidly reusable rocket—which has never been done before—is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access. While most rockets are designed to burn up on reentry, SpaceX is building rockets that not only withstand reentry, but also land safely on Earth to be refueled and fly again. Over the next year, SpaceX has at least a dozen launches planned with a number of additional testing opportunities. Given what we know today, we believe it is quite likely that with one of those flights we will not only be able to land a Falcon 9 first stage, but also re-fly.
The Race – Backstory
This is the story behind The Race …
Christmas 2003, “Number One Son” gave me the very first Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1, that he had picked up while studying abroad in Japan. It had not yet been released in the states.
Image courtesy of Steves Digicams
The specs were impressive for the day: 5 mega-pixel, 3.6″w x 2.4″h x 0.8″d (91mm x 60mm x 21mm), 6.3 oz. / 180g. Click on the camera image for a review and detailed specs. My cell phone in 2004 was the standard flip phone. I don’t even recall if it had camera. If it did, it was worthless.
This was the first camera I could carry in my pocket. I could take it everywhere. With the USB cable I could relatively easily transfer pictures from it to my computer. I had QuickTime Pro on my computer and realized that if the pictures were numbered sequentially QuickTime could turn them into a movie. I began to experiment with stop action animation and time lapse photography. The Race is one of my best.
I had to build a holder for the camera in order to mount it to a tripod. The actors were my sons’ Warhammer figures, Russian toy cars I had collected in the 90s while working there, other toy vehicles, a cat toy, and a robotic spider.
The entire video at 6fps (frames per second) is only 30 seconds long. I filmed the actual race first on the 19th of June and then decided to film the starting line sequence the next day to extend the length. I initially used the Beatles Birthday as the soundtrack. The final 30 second cut lived on my work computer for over a decade, copied over with all of my files each time I got a newer PC.
Last week I decided to try to get it onto my iPhone. I guess I could have done a USB iTunes to iPhone transfer, but that would have meant upgrading the decades old iTunes that I never use at work. So I emailed it to myself via Gmail.
It opened fine on my iPhone, but the sound would not play. I opened it in iMovie and then managed to add Birthday to the soundtrack. Here I digress. For reasons unknown iMovie would only recognize recently purchased songs on my iPhone. Here I digress again, I just discovered that you don’t get the iCloud download icon in Music if WiFi is turned off. I can’t find the setting in 8.1.2 to make it visible. Back up one digression, so I repurchased Birthday and used it.
However, when I attempted to save it back to my camera roll I got an error. After many hours of frustration I decided to look for video format converters on the Apple App Store. I ended up buying two:
The Video Converter – Convert videos to and from file formats! by SmoothMobile, LLC https://appsto.re/us/rD2p1.i
MConverter Medias Converter by bill santiago https://appsto.re/us/59UVL.i
I am not endorsing either of these … and there are many others to choose from.
The original version of The Race was in MOV format and needed to be converted to MP4 format. Once done, I could export it to the camera roll. Then I decided that Born To Be Wild would be a better fit. So I redid the 30s clip again.
Now to upload to Vimeo.
All for 30 seconds of audio. How do others get away with uploading entire songs, albums, music videos, movies?
Alas it is what it is. So I searched iTunes for Royalty Free Music, found
Instrumentals for TV Productions, Podcasts, Movies, and Jingles by Royalty Free Music https://itun.es/us/MZVNv
and chose the first recording for the soundtrack. It was 99 cents.
I liked the song enough that I created the looped versions in order to be able to play the entire song
I don’t know anything about DRM (Digital Rights Management), but I have to assume that that 30s clip of Born To Be Wild had a DRM tag that immediately told Vimeo “NO NO NO”. I suppose it could have checked a Shazam-like audio database, but how does that explain all the other entries the are longer and more blatant. I assume there is a way to strip off the DRM tag. I need to investigate this.
There has got to be an affordable way for individuals to license mainstream audio at an affordable price for use in homemade videos posted to the web. See my rant https://contrafactual.com/2014/12/14/21st-century-i-p-2/
Anyway back to the making of The Race. It was old-school “arrange the figures, take a photo, move the figures, take a photo, repeat” … 181 times. I couldn’t walk the next day – my thighs were in agony.
Speaking of old-school, if you haven’t seen it check out the 1979 Wizard of Speed and Time by Mike Jittlov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLhLn9hVkE
I’ll (click)
be (click)
seeing (click)
you (click)
21st Century I.P.
RANT
Hey Googstapos … To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, “You’ve got at lot of damn gall to come after folks who include copyrighted music in their YouTube videos when you collect and store FOREVER every damn bit of personal information you can about us to be used against us to try to sell us crap we don’t need!”
OK … That about sums up the rest of this post. This is an incoherent rant. Deal with it.
Weggieboy’s comments on my JOSIV5 post hit a nerve.
Now I am not a lawyer and I don’t even play one on TV, so I have no legal insight here. But consider the following: let’s say
-
I invite you to my house to listen to my LP record of C. W. McCall’s Convoy
I invite you to my house to listen to my 8-track of C. W. McCall’s Convoy
I invite you to my…
View original post 1,050 more words
Various Short Stories – Christian Bergman
Woo Hoo .. My first review
Thank you Angela!
I had the pleasure of reading some short stories written by Christian Bergman, and they were great fun! You have some sci-fi going on, and get a Twilight Zone feel with some of these stories. The first story, “Curiosity” gives you a behind-the-scenes look at a team watching a planet rover, still checking and manning it daily even though a newer rover seems to be getting all of the attention, funding, and support. You follow along with them as they try to determine what they could have seen when a glint of light is reflected in one of the images.
I was anxious as I read through this first story to see exactly what they may have discovered. Sorry friends, but as is my norm, there will be no spoilers here! You will have to read it to find out for yourself what exactly they may have seen.
There were…
View original post 42 more words
RMLV
The Race Multi-Loop Variable fps
June 19-20, 2004
181 images originally @ 6fps
Each loop is at at a different fps (frames per second) to display different levels of detail.
RML
The Race – Multiple Loops
“The album version”
See also https://contrafactual.com/2014/12/11/the-race-radio-edit/
Happy Hmong New Year!
This is a Hmong one of the best Hmong websites. 🙂
I’m sorry, I can’t help myself.
Very cute art.
The Race (Radio Edit)
Occupy Mars
http://shop.spacex.com/featured/occupy-mars.html
Elon Musk wants to put a million people on Mars.
http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/
Battle Axe Anyone?
SOG
SOG Specialty Knives and Tools
I am not a collector of knives and tools, per se, but I do appreciate well made technology. SOG is one of these companies … with a history. I discovered SOG while investigating various multi-tools. They have an excellent selection of very well built and functional multi-tools. (http://www.sogknives.com/tactical/multi-tools.html)
After much back and forth I finally decided to order the black Powerduo Multitool shown below.
http://www.sogknives.com/tactical/multi-tools/powerduo-black-oxide.html
Below are some fascinating videos on the history of SOG.
Take point
Interview w/ Spencer Frazier
Remember, try to restrain yourself. You probably don’t need to buy them all.
Orion
Overview
Launch
Splashdown
Automattic
“We are passionate about making the web a better place.”
Discovered this via the iOS app
Me > Settings > About
by touching the www.automattic.com
I did not realize just how much Automattic was into:
WordPress.com
Jetpack
Simplenote
Synchronization
Cloudup
VaultPress
Akismet
Polldaddy
Gravatar
Simperium
Code Poet
WordPress.com VIP
Longreads
WordPress.org
WP for iOS
WP for Android
P2 Theme
BuddyPress
bbPress
WordCamp SF
You are already familiar with some of these products if you blog on WordPress, but there is so much more.
Find out more at www.automattic.com
On the Moon
Questions
What do you call a German vampire bat that sucks the air out of tires?
Deflator mouse
= = =
If a man is male, is Ironman Female?
Merry Critmas
As in Critical mass
Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor. The construction of CP-1 was part of the Manhattan Project, and was carried out by the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. It was built under the west viewing stands of the original Stagg Field. The first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1 on 2 December 1942, under the supervision of Enrico Fermi. Fermi described the apparatus as “a crude pile of black bricks and wooden timbers.” It was made of a large amount of graphite and uranium, with “control rods” of cadmium, indium, and silver, and unlike most subsequent reactors, it had no radiation shield or cooling system.
Reference: Wikipedia
December 2nd also just happens to be my birthday.
More
Port Charlotte Scottish Barley
A Critmas present from a very good friend.
The video says it all.
http://www.bruichladdich.com/the-whisky/port-charlotte/scottish-barley
In an alternate reality I would retire to Islay, preferably in or near Port Charlotte.
Cubicle
According to Wikipedia, [the] office cubicle was created by designer Robert Propst for Herman Miller, and released in 1967 under the name “Action Office II”.
However, the first famous use of the concept of the cubicle did not occur until 1984. That would be George Orwell’s 1984 (written in 1948).
It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Winston worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate.
The cubicle is mentioned thirteen times in Orwell’s 1984 and at times is a major plot device. Then as now the cubicle was/is a cramped, privacy-free, dehumanizing, uniform workspace where your every move is open to observation and your every word can be heard by all.
• • •
So the next time you report to your cubicle for work, just remember, Big Brother is watching.
FREE FOR FIVE – The Dystopian Nation of City-State: An Anthology
Free through Critmas (Dec 2)
Get your free copy now!
Get your FREE copy of our first publication for a limited time only via Kindle and the Kindle app!
The Dystopian Nation of City-State: An Anthology – Origin, Corruption, and Rebellion is available free of charge from November 28 through December 2nd – FIVE days to grab a FREE copy of this intriguing anthology!
Follow the link:
Or search The Dystopian Nation of City-State on amazon.com.
And again, James and I are in the final stages of proofing and editing the print version of the anthology. The hard copy should be available within a week or two.
This collection of short stories highlights a futuristic world when the cruel government controls its innocent, yet gullible citizens. However, some residents defy the vile bureaucracy, and form a new, peaceful society – a society to one day overthrow the corrupt government. This only makes tensions high within the…
View original post 45 more words
A Little Like, Please?
As I am currently re-reading 1984, reblogging this seemed fitting.
Hello! As novice writers, James and I need a love – love in the form of likes.
If you would, please “like” us on Facebook. With this, we hope you equally like (or love) our literature.
Yes, James and I will follow and/or like you in return! Please comment and tell us your social media platform(s), and we will give you a little social media love.
James and I are avid supporters of all authors, musicians, artists, etc. All of us can become successful through a simple click or tap of that magical “like” or “follow” button!
The Dystopian Nation of City-State on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/dystopian.city – or just hit “like” on this WordPress page.
Thanks so much!
182 Days
3:09 AM on November 29th and I just calculated (using one of those web calculators) that it has been 182 Days since I last published anything on The Nudist War (TNW).
What can I say? What excuse can I give? Writer’s block? Too busy at work? Too busy at home? Lack of interest?
The truth is most likely all of the above. Writing The Nudist War was an escape from reality, an escape from life. Now I am in the thick of both. Too tired or busy to write after work at night. Otherwise occupied on the weekends.
Sure I blog (or re-blog) the odd bit of news that interests me. The cats continue to be somehow more photogenic everyday. I even continue to get new followers. But I am not writing. Not writing.
I closely follow the stock market, nursing my 401k along. Buying low, selling high, developing a sense of timing that has held true for many quarters. “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful” ~ Warren Buffet. I raise cash at the top and buy hand over fist at the bottom. Well that’s the plan at least. Like most investors I buy too soon (running out of cash) and sell too soon (not raising as much cash as I could).
As I write this, all three cats are piled on top of me. The Pickle boy just plopped his massive frame under my chin – purring loudly. Hillary and Patches are in their usual spots.
It’s not as if I haven’t been thinking about TNW, I have, quite a bit over these past few months. I have a number of plot developments and plot twist in mind, I just haven’t been able to get off my ass and get back to writing. I am taking a few days of vacation through Critmas (Dec 2), so maybe I can finish the next chapter.
1984
I am currently re-reading George Orwell’s 1984, published interestingly enough in 1948. There is talk of yet another remake of the novel into a movie (see IMDB), the first being in 1956, the later in … conveniently enough … 1984.
A world constantly at war, justifying constant surveillance, sound familiar?
In truth, it appears to be modeled more after the worst (truth and fiction) of the old Soviet Union, yet it could easily be remade to reflect more modern times (even down to the flat panel vid screens hanging on the walls and cubicles for the workers, except that the cubicles of Orwell’s 1984 appear to be bigger than the ones I am used to seeing).
If you had to read it in grade school and have long forgotten it … or have never read it … go get a copy and read it. Amazon, iBooks, used book stores – all good places to buy it on the cheap.
1984 may not have been like “1984”, but 2014 has just enough similarities to make one ever so slightly uncomfortable if one thinks about it too much.
Also just over 30 years ago …
Acky’s Breakout Reloaded
Batman
Later that night
The view from my lap
Foreground to background: Patches, Hillary, Pickles
… minutes later
Foreground to background: Pickles, Hillary
Note the toy mouse in front. It is a poor substitute for the real mouse that Pickles caught hiding under the refrigerator earlier this week. With the colder weather it must have snuck in to get warm. Hillary and Pickles doubled-teamed that poor mouse until it died most likely of cardiac arrest. Sometime later Pickles and Hillary presented their lifeless treasure to the Mrs. as she sat on the potty. They were soooo proud of themselves!
The Glass Age
I discovered this over at the
Cool high-speed video!
Part 1
Part 2
Astronaut
Guillaume Juin
http://vimeo.com/guillaumejuin
If you enjoyed that, be sure to check out these other ISS time lapse videos on Vimeo.
The Near Future of Space Travel
An Essay
This week saw the crash and burn of two commercial space ships; one manned, the other unmanned. Regardless of how commonplace spaceflight seems to have become it is still dangerous business. As Elon Musk quipped when a SpaceX test vehicle self-destructed (as intended) when something went haywire over the McGregor Texas test site, “Rockets are tricky“.
100th Merlin 1D Engine
In stark* contrast to both Orbital Sciences and United Launch Alliance, both of which use Russian-made main engines, 100% of SpaceX vehicles, are designed, manufactured, assembled, and tested in the U.S. at SpaceX-owned or leased facilities. SpaceX recently announced completion of it 100th Merlin 1D engine in two years.
Russian rocket engines suspected in launch blast
http://m.phys.org/news/2014-10-russian-rocket-blast.html
The AJ26 engines—modified and tested in the U.S.—originally were designed for the massive Soviet rockets meant to take cosmonauts to the moon during the late 1960s.
The massive explosion of the Russian Moon rocket dashed the Russian bid for the Moon. Faulty AJ26 engines … the same used on the Antares booster … most likely caused the Russian Moon rocket explosion. [my comment]
In 2012, SpaceX’s billionaire founder and CEO, Elon Musk, called the Antares rocket “a punchline to a joke” because of the Russian engines. SpaceX, by contrast, makes its own rocket parts.
“I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere,” Musk said in an interview with Wired magazine.
2001 Theatrical Re-Release
2001: A Space Odyssey … Returns
UK Re-release to theaters in November
New Trailer
Original Trailer
Only the big screen can do justice to this film. I hope it comes to the States.
Source: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/10/21/2001-a-space-odyssey-trailer/
See also last year’s post: 2001
Punny Skeleton
Punishingly bad 🙂
Apollo Retroreflectors
Yet more proof that man really did walk on the moon.
Left on the moon by Apollo missions 11, 14, and 15 the three retroreflectors continue to provide an ultra-precise means of determining Earth-Moon distance.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
Retroreflectors provide surveyors a precise way of measuring point-to-point distance by timing the two-way time of a laser pulse. The optical design is such that reflected light is returned in the exact direction from which it was sent with very little scatter.
These methods are faster, safer, and infinitely more accurate than measuring distance by stretching a long steel tape (called a chain for historical reasons) as I did in college surveying camp over 30 years ago. Laser range finders and retroreflectors are the mainstay of modern surveying. This technology did not become commercially available until the 1980s, yet NASA used it in 70s to accurately measure Earth-Moon distance.
With the right equipment anyone can measure the precise distance to the Moon and simultaneously confirm that MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969 A.D.
Too cute
Pickles | Patches | Hillary
The dinner time audience
Zonked
Pickles
Walmart, CVS, others boycott Apple Pay
Think about what they’re doing.” wrote Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on Saturday. “They’re turning off NFC payment systems — the whole thing — only because people were actually using them with Apple Pay. Apple Pay works so well that it even works with non-partner systems. These things have been installed for years and so few people used them, apparently, that these retailers would rather block everyone than allow Apple Pay to continue working.”
…
“I don’t know that CVS and Rite Aid disabling Apple Pay out of spite is going to drive customers to switch pharmacies” writes Gruber. “But I do know that CurrentC is unlikely to ever gain any traction whatsoever.”
CurrentC is the app MCX developed for use on smartphones. Josh Constine gave it a close look in Techcrunch yesterday and came to the same conclusion Gruber did: It’s a system designed not to make consumers’ lives easier, but to do an end run around the credit card companies.
Source: Fortune
Why CVS and Rite Aid are blocking Apple Pay
May be time to switch from CVS to Walgreens?
Brotherly love
F-Bombs for Feminism
Lockheed Compact Fusion Reactor
Can this be real?
The Skunk Works mind-set and “the pace that people work at here is ridiculously fast,” he says. “We would like to get to a prototype in five generations. If we can meet our plan of doing a design-build-test generation every year, that will put us at about five years, and we’ve already shown we can do that in the lab.”
The early reactors will be designed to generate around 100 MW and fit into transportable units measuring 23 X 43 ft. “That’s the size we are thinking of now. You could put it on a semi-trailer, similar to a small gas turbine, put it on a pad, hook it up and can be running in a few weeks,”
Thomas McGuire, AviationWeek interview (see link below)
Wow …
Links
http://m.aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/lockheed-martins-new-fusion-reactor-design-can-change-h-1646578094
http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-bash-lockheed-on-nuclear-fusion-2014-10
Rubicon Technology
With the demise of GT Advanced Technologies, one might ask where Apple will get its Transparent Aluminum? Perhaps more accurately, who is currently supplying Apple with sapphire, since there is some question as to whether GTAT ever got the Mesa Arizona plant up and running.
One answer might be …
To harvest the crystal, we use a very thin diamond-cutting wire.
Pay close attention to the 4:00 minute mark of the following video about Rubicon Technology’s sapphire production.
Perhaps Rubicon was and is the manufacturer of the sapphire Apple uses for the camera lens, fingerprint scanner cover, and watch crystal … with Apple planning to transition to GTAT once production was up to quality and capacity.
The iPhone 6 Plus Wins The Longer Race
Interesting re-evaluation …
Elon Musk
is the next Steve Jobs.
There … I said it.
Where to begin? Have you ever watched a Steve Jobs product unveiling? Watch Elon Musk as he unveils the model D or Dragon V2. They are both on this blog.
Jobs: changed the industry with his first company; Apple.
Musk: changed the industry with his first company; PayPal.
Jobs: was simultaneously CEO of two companies; Apple and Pixar
Musk: is CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and … Solar City.
Jobs: gave us amazing technology that changed our lives
Musk: electric cars, coast to coast free charging stations, freakin’ rocket ships, man. How amazing is that!
Jobs: “the journey is the reward”
Musk: “Mars”
I could go one, but you get the idea.
Elon Musk is the next Steve Jobs.
Contrafactual 