Carbonized Jimi |
Silicon Forest
If the type is too small, Ctrl+ is your friend
Monday, September 16, 2024
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Glass Beams - Mahal
Glass Beams - 'Mahal' (Live)
Glass Beams
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Pictures
Tsar Bomba |
Donald Sutherland in Kelly's Heroes |
Corsairs over San Diego |
Sarah Gillis playing the violin in zero-G |
B-24 & B-17 over Golden Gate Bridge |
Matchbox Cars What does 2'4 mean? |
Reliefs of Indonesian history at Indonesian National Monument |
A-10 Warthog |
The Razorback, Port Campbell National Park, Victoria, Australia No, those white blobs are not houses. Nobody lives there. |
Roadkill's 56 Chevy & Mount Shasta |
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Fun with Math
United States of Voronoi |
California Bob reports:
I just learned about this. This is one of those things that's easy to see but difficult to describe.
Voronoi Cells |
A Voronoi diagram partitions a plane around points or "seeds" within it. It THINK it divides the area so that the boundaries are always halfway between one seed and the next closest seed.The official description is, boundaries are drawn so that all points within that boundary, are closer to its seed, than to any other seed.If each seed was a repelling magnet, would this describe the same boundaries?Here [image at top] it's used to draw state boundaries around state capitals.
Mazdarati 2.0! - Roadkill
Mazdarati 2.0! - Roadkill S13E04 - Reality Car TV Show
RoadKill TV Show
Cargo Ships
Cargo Sailing Ship Anemos |
If you read Basil Greenhill's book The Merchant Schooners (it is about the end of sail in and around Britain) he describes how sailing ships were out priced by steam ships. The steam ships were NOT cheaper to run (the typical sailing schooners had a crew of four, maybe five including a "boy") but were often weather bound for weeks. Looking at old maritime charts, sheltered harbours, bays and inlets were marked as waiting grounds where the sailing vessels could wait favourable winds. The steam ship had a larger crew and had fuel costs but could, on average, make three voyages and earn more money in the same time period than the sail. The crew had to be paid, whether under way or not.
Nowadays, with high value cargoes, the time taken on voyages ties up a lot of capital (imagine a 20 foot container packed with the latest i Phones) which represents a lot of capital tied up and costing interest payments.
Howard I Chapelle laid out the economic case in his book The Search for Speed Under Sail.
Just like cars, if you want the small engine, basic model, it is cheap but the most powerful engined GTI version is a lot more expensive. Speed costs, whether a ship or car and the ship owners would not pay money for a fast ship if they didn't need the speed.
Bulk carriers, carrying low value cargoes (coal, iron ore etc.) plod along at about 12 knots, or about as fast as a bicycle. Container ships on the Trans Pacific route crank out over 30 knots, some as high as 35 knots. That is FAST but they are carrying valuable cargoes.
Add in the fact that ports are geared to handing containers from a ship with no deck obstructions (y'know, like masts, rigging and the clutter on that one) and you need to ask how is it going to be unloaded and where? Going back to the 1890's where men carried individual sacks and boxes off the vessel ain't gonna happen, unless it is a primitive part of the world like Asia or the Pacific Islands. Again, a fast turn around in port so the ship can be earning is the aim, not paying the crew to sit around and/or waiting for another cargo. So the ship has delivered it cargo, unless it can pick up a cargo for the return leg (what kind and what needs to be shipped back to Europe in such a small quantity?), then that is cost and no income if it has to return empty.
It is a bit like a millionaire buying a ranch so his wife can play at being a horse trainer/breeder. In other words, a hobby and a money pit.
Books:
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Iceberg in Sight! Full Speed Ahead!
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova |
My news feed is full of blather about the debate. I didn't watch it. If it didn't bore me, I am sure I would have found it irritating. I like Ms. Zakharova's take:
The US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris lacked substance and was largely irrelevant considering that their country is going full speed ahead towards disaster, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has argued.
Speaking on Radio Sputnik on Wednesday, she said she did not consider it a high-profile event. It mattered as much as the outcome of a hypothetical wrestling match on board the ill-fated Titanic during its trip across the Atlantic Ocean, she claimed.
”Who do you think won? Why would that matter? The iceberg is 15 minutes away,” she said.
Extending the metaphor, she said neither Trump nor Harris intended to get to the wheel to change the course of the ship. America is on its way to a “total, global disaster” and the rest of the world is trying to prepare for it, she suggested.
The debate itself, according to Zakharova, was a mixture of “fantasizing about the future” and citing some facts about the past, with the candidates failing to agree on what those facts were.
”We were given the latest show by people who apparently never ever take any responsibility for what they say,” the Russian official said.
International audiences paid attention to what happened in Philadelphia on Tuesday night because they want to know which nations “will get punished and how much” during the next US presidential term, Zakharova stated.
According to the media, neither candidate had a decisive advantage over the other in the debate, which could be the only one between Trump and Harris before the November election. In a CNN focus group of 13 undecided voters from Pennsylvania, eight said the Democratic candidate won. Meanwhile six out of 10 undecided voters interviewed by Reuters said they were siding with the Republican after the face off.
Genius Girl Repairs Generator
Genius girl repaired 150kg generator burned out a lot of parts can't be used took 3 days to rep
林果儿Lin Guoer
Weight of girl + generator | 136.4 | kilograms | |
minus | Weight of girl | 44.6 | kilograms |
equals | 91.8 | kilograms | |
times | 2.2 | pounds per kilogram | |
equals | 202.0 | pounds |
IMD PTO 22/2 S AVR - 22kW Tractor-Driven PTO Generator w/ AVR (540 RPM) |
It weighs 170 pounds and costs $4,300. The case for our girl's generator is much larger than needed for the size of the windings, and it is much older, so that might account for the difference in weight.
Watching her attack the stator windings with a chisel was impressive.
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Monday, September 9, 2024
out.aza.blue
out.aza.blue |
out.aza.blue is a gourmet restaurant out in the middle of nowhere, 20 minutes from my house on the Wilson River highway. You gotta keep your eyes open for it because it's just a wide spot in the road.
Links
Midwest Chick pulls back the curtain on the WEF's (World Economic Forum) COVID-19 scam.
- World Economic Forum Finally Tells the Truth About Covid: It Was a ‘Test’ of Our Obedience to Rapidly Forming New World Order
- ‘My Carbon’: An approach for inclusive and sustainable cities
Friday, September 6, 2024
The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars - Notes
"I know what I know, Prince. Even if he were capable of resisting the temptation, I would still be suspicious of those beautiful English women who travel, those sleeping-car pets who carry a Pekinese in their arms and a lover at their beck and call. I know them, those emancipated females, whose souls are studded with gems from Cartier's and whose bodies are accessible to any sort of voluptuous pleasure. They would eat snobbery out of the hand of a leper and sacrifice their standing to astonish the gallery. Their colossal conceit bulges like a goître in the centre of their otherwise emaciated hearts. Their epicureanism intoxicates them. They are above conventions. They laugh at middle class morals. They prod prejudices with their fingers and they lift their skirts in the face of disconcerted virtue."
Okaaaay then. The Madonna is a jet-set playgirl, or an international slut, depending on how you view such behavior. Of course she's not in the jet-set, that would not happen for another 50 years, so she has to make do with sleeping cars in trains. Probably a lot more comfortable.
Prince Seliman might be a prototype for James Bond, except he is far too trusting. He travels to Batoum, Georgia, thinking he is going to be perfectly safe, but Georgia is in the hands of the Reds and he gets thrown in the slammer and comes within a hairsbreadth of being executed. Silly boy.
The book has some wonderful passages and a bunch of furrin words and phrases. While I was reading I was sometimes inclined to make some notes. Here they are:
Chapter 7 An Angel Needs a Valet
- Page 90 top.
- Dr. Otto Kupfer, Zahnart (Dentist)
- Fraulein Erna Dickerhoff, Gesangsunterricht (Singing lessons)
- Page 92 top.
- "That depends on your definition of honesty. Have you the 18th century point of view? Or do you think along the 20th century lines?" I still haven't figured out what he means by this.
- Page 110 "a beige coat trimmed with skunk fur". Skunk fur? Is that a real thing. Apparently so.
- Page 112 "Our two glasses of Chartreuse danced merrily with the motion of the train." I seem to remember my parents having a bottle of it. I thought it was sweet, but I don't actually remember tasting it. I might have to get a bottle.
- Page 113 "Two real tziganes, with the faces of ex-convicts, were playing softly." tzigane - Hungarian gypsy.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church before being damaged in WW2 |
- Page 114 "Marvelous dreams in the shadow of the Church of the Memory of Wilhelm the First."
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Kaffee Franz - just a coffee shop
- Weiner Abendblatt - newspaper
- Bretzel - pretzel
- moka - coffee
- Haluschka - a pasta dish with curd or sheep's cheese and bacon cubes
- Page 117 Heidsick Monopole - A brand of champagne. Monopole just means there is only one company that makes it.
- page 119 Budapest, Brasov, Bucharest, Constanza - stops on the Orient Express from Berlin to Constantinople. See map.
- Page 207
- Palais d'Hiver - Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Gobelins - French dyer of scarlet cloth
- Kchessinkaia - Ballerina
- Smolny Institute - School for girls in Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Page 209 dressing for dinner at Ciro's - fancy restaurant in Monaco
- Page 213 'Saint Vincent de Paul of Cook's Tourist Agency'
- St Vincent de Paul - 17th century French Catholic Saint
- Cook's Tourist Agency - big time travel agency
Chapter 17 Scotch Thistles Sometimes Prick
- Page 214 Locke Lamond - Lake in Scotland
- Page 215
- Rob Roy - a Scottish outlaw, who later became a folk hero.
- Wallace Island - Small island in Lake Lamond possibly named for William Wallace, one of the leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence
- Page 216 Ben Lomond - hill in Scotland
- Page 218 'Our Jury has not for criminals, even when they act under the impulse of passion, the stupid indulgence of French juries, which by acquitting guilty persons, encourage the abuse of revolvers and knives.'
- Page 220
- '. . . tea-rose déshabillé trimmed with white fur.' - a negligee.
- "The Lady of the Lake." - mythical enchantress from tales of King Arthur
- Page 221
- ". . . Patou continues to make stunning models, and" - French fashion house
- "Guerlain such heavenly perfumes." - French perfume house
- Page 222 Countess of March, known as Agnes the Black - 14th century Scottish hero
- Page 222 demagogy - rabble rousing
- Page 223 "You know that I prefer the sparkle of champagne to the dregs of port and the silent language of love to the eloquence of the flesh." - ???
- Page 224 "You will soon be rich again. And nothing else matters very much." - Really?
- Page 224 ". . . admirable Raeburn hung above the immense sofa." - 18th century Scottish portrait painter
- Page 225 ". . . the metamorphosis of nature."
- Page 226 arrière-pensée - a concealed thought or intention; an ulterior motive.
- Page 230 Harry Lauder's popular songs - YouTube playlist
- Page 230 propitious solitude - favorable state of being alone
- Page 234 our S. R. in London - Solicitor Rex - criminal prosecutor
- Page 239 de trop - not wanted; unwelcome.
- Page 246 Josephstadt - suburb of Vienna
- Page 247 The Garden of Hesperides - a world from Greek mythology Page 247 midinette - a seamstress or assistant in a Parisian fashion house
- Page 248 mon chevalier errant - my knight straying from the proper course
- Page 248 the virgins of Correggio - The Assumption of the Virgin is a fresco by the Italian Late Renaissance artist Antonio da Correggio decorating the dome of the Cathedral of Parma, Italy.
- Page page 253 Destiny's Bazaar - the vast array of possibilities that may become available in the future
The Victims' Game - Season 2 - Netflix Series
The Victims' Game (Season 2 Teaser subtitled) | Trailer in English | Netflix
Trailers in English
Thursday, September 5, 2024
Cathy Smith
The Infamous Rock Muse and the Comedy Icon
The Cody Tucker Show
The Band - The Weight
GreatOldiesDJ
Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown (1974)
Katy Jones
Random Thoughts
White Privilege
I was talking to some people and it occurred to me that I had some serious advantages in my life. My parents were both college graduates, I also got a degree and I got a job at a big, important company. So now I'm wondering if I compare myself to an indigent immigrant, or shoot, anyone who didn't have my advantages, how much money would it take to put us on an equal footing? I'm thinking that today it would be about $500 thousand dollars. So maybe White Privilege just means having money in the bank.
Women Drivers
These days driving takes a lot out of me. A drive to the airport and back takes about two hours which is okay, but then I need a day to recover. If you just follow the rules, stay in your lane, and don't drive aggressively, you are pretty safe, you are unlikely to have an accident. From watching YouTube videos I'm learning that weird stuff can happen at any time and at any place. Being aware of your surroundings helps, but sometimes stuff just comes out of left field. When that happens, there is often nothing you can do, but sometimes if you are quick enough and can grok the situation, you might be able to avoid disaster. So now I am wondering if men are perhaps, statistically speaking, slightly better at these reactions. This is not where I intended to go with this, but I think I kind of lost whatever idea I originally had.
Genetics Part A - Women, babies and war
Birthrates are down worldwide. I'm wondering if maybe the lack of wars that kill zillions of people has someone affected people's brains so their urge to make more babies just isn't as strong.
Genetics Part B - Fat, weight, famine, ornery
Likewise, I wonder if famines in the past tended to select for people who had built up enough fat that they could weather the storm. Not so many famines, especially in the West, and maybe that's why we have so many fat people. Likewise, Americans are known as brash, maybe that's because emigrating from Europe to the USA selected for people who "aren't going to take it anymore".
Fever
Does the body temperature go up because the higher temperature helps kill invading microbes, or does the temperature go up because the body is burning more energy because fighting infections takes more energy?
Gaza
Hamas is a a terrorist organization funded by Iran. Terrorists deserve nothing less than death. A strong society can withstand small scale terrorist attacks, but the October 7, 2023 massacre was horrific and deserves a horrific response.
Some people seem to think that only a fraction of the people in Gaza belong to Hamas, that is, most of the people in Gaza are not terrorists. Numerous idiots have been calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. What Israel needs to do is mount a full scale war on Hamas (if they haven't already), but call it a war of liberation for the Palestinians. In other words, they need better PR (Public Relations). Wipe out Hamas, annex Gaza and make it part of Israel. To the victor go the spoils. Just hope that the spoils are not rotten.
Vlad the Impaler |
There has also been some whining about how captured terrorists are treated. What Israel should do with captured terrorists is impale them on ten foot tall spikes. All these mideast Jihadists are uncivilized savages. They are behaving like they are living in the 15th century, so we should be treating them as we would have in the 15th century.
Ukraine
I don't understand the war in Ukraine. I've been trying to figure it out, but I'm not having much luck. But this week I came up with a couple of new ideas.
My favorite is that somebody with serious clout, he might even be running the country, though with all the infighting going on I don't think anyone is really in charge, and certainly not effing Joe Brandon. Anyway, this mythical big shot has got a personal hard on for Ukraine and he just wants to destroy the country. Somebody pissed him off so bad, made him so angry that he is going to lay waste to the entire country. So far he's doing a pretty good job.
This might even be why he decided to start poking the bear back in 2014. Irritate the Russians enough and they are likely to retaliate, and that would suit Mr. Big just fine. Also, don't allow Ukraine to actually retaliate against Russia because that would mean war and we don't really want to hurt Russia, we want to confine all the death and destruction to Ukraine.
Ukrainian Oil and Gas Reserves and War Zones |
The other idea is that the war is being fought over the Ukraine's natural gas and oil fields. This would normally be my favorite, oil being money and all, but the occupied areas do not seem to coincide with the oil fields. But maybe Russia just hasn't gotten around to them yet.
Djibouti Notes
Djibouti |
Cameron Mitchell shooting the .600 Nitro Express
Cam's Wild Life
LNG Tanker |
The New London School Explosion | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
Fascinating Horror
USS Vella Gulf |
Page 77
USS Bainbridge |
Maersk Alabama Hijacking |
Page 80 Aphrodite thousand foot long LNG tanker owned by bin Laden
Page 110 Remember we're talking about a federal system of people with semi-one track minds. You make a mistake you spend the rest of your career in a third world country so they sit on this till the twins go away.
Page 199 'the Song telling us "The sweet things in life to you were just loaned. So how can you lose what you never owned?"' - Rudy Vallee
Statue de Foch Place du Trocadero, 75016 Paris France |
Page 202 We have this passage:
Cars came around to take different streets off the Place Verdun, circling past the statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, 1851-1929, on a pedestal in the center of the plaza, the single word J'Attaque below his name.
Xavier said, "Ferdinand was asked what he'd do if surrounded by Germans and he said he'd attack. I believe it was at Verdun he lost somethin like eighty thousand men j'attackin." He said, "There's your man there."
So I go looking for Place Verdun and a statue of Marshal Foch in Djibouti but all I find it this poster:
Commandant Marchand - Across Africa Book Cover |
"In 1896, Captain Marchand was appointed to lead the Congo-Nile mission to the White Nile River, with the aim of establishing a French protectorate in southern Egypt. Marchand led a team of eight French officers and 150 Senegalese skirmishers up the Congo, Ubangi and Bahr el-Ghazal rivers, arriving in Fashoda on 10 July 1898. They built a fort and raised the French tricolour flag. In September, the Anglo-Egyptian army under General Kitchener arrived at Fashoda. French and British colonialist ambitions came face to face at Fashoda, a standoff that ended in December 1898 when the French government ordered its troops to retreat to Djibouti."
Eventually I realized Xavier was just giving an example of a particularly bull-headed soldier to describe Buck, the soldier they were meeting. Although the French were in Africa, Marshal Foch was not.
- Joe Foss shot down 26 Zeke's over the Solomons in his Grumman Wildcat and later became governor of South Dakota.
- Major Bing Bang Bong flying a P-38 shot down 40 doing it during his tour and gave his life testing a jet.
- Another Ace, Pappy Boyington, a Sioux Indian, shot down his 26th over Rabul. Later that same day some nip sent Pappy down in flames.
- I forgot the name of the Navy pilot in a Dauntless crashing into a cruiser after he'd been hit. Another hero giving his life for his country, all Medal of Honor winners. He's probably referring to Colin Kelly who was flying a Vindicator, which is very similar to the Dauntless.
Page 243 Big Mucha Island
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Vikings: Valhalla Season 3 Netflix
Vikings: Valhalla | Season 3 Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Maniakes was a Greek general of the Byzantine Empire . . . . His greatest achievement was the partial reconquest of Sicily from the Arabs beginning in 1038. He was aided by the Varangian Guard, then led by Harald Hardrada, who later became King of Norway.
Vikings: Valhalla |
Wikipedia season 3 episode summaries.
Kleo: Season 2 - Netflix Series
Kleo: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Peter Pan - Keller Auditorium
Peter Pan - A New Musical
BwayAmerica
Wikipedia: Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, often known simply as Peter Pan, is a work by J. M. Barrie, in the form of a 1904 play . . .
Text Editor
I've been thinking about text editors, Aedit in particular. Aedit was like the first text editor I really got to know. This was back in the early 1980s and we were using Intel blue box development machines that the company was renting from Intel for the astronomical price of a thousand dollars a month, least ways that's the way I remember it.
I kept using Aedit when I went to work for Intel. I spent, I dunno, five or ten years using it. Then Windows came on the scene with their fancy schmantzy bullshit and I got to learn a whole new way way or ruining my life.
So here we are 30 years later and I am still pining for my lost Aedit text editor. Then I got to thinking that I should probably just write my own. I mean, how tough can it be? So now I'm thinking about this and I start thinking about different ways of storing text in memory. Do we do it by the line, or maybe strings, or just as one big block of text? This leads to the question of how do you handle the case where the text it too large to fit in memory? Kind of an unlikely scenario, I know, given the amount of memory modern computers have, but Aedit ran in like 64KB and could Handle any size file. Well, any size you could fit on a disk and our 8 inch hard disks were only 10MB. I do remember tackling files that were over one megabyte and Aedit did not complain. It might have gotten a little slow, but it handled the file just fine. So now I'm wondering how would I handle a multi-terabyte file. That is probably a ridiculous case, but if you are going to allow a program to handle large files, someone is going to push it to the limit, so you need to be prepared.
And then I thought: I wonder if maybe somebody else has already done this, and lo and behold, they have:
Port of Aedit to C
Using the source of Aedit shared on https://github.com/abiliojr/aedit.git, the code here is an attempt to port from PLM to C and to support newer operating systems.
So now I have another reason to get myself in gear and get a new Linux box and get away from this stinky Chromebox.
A Killer Paradox - Netflix Series
A Killer Paradox | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix K-Content
INSTC - International North–South Transport Corridor
In Asia, New Wars Are Opening Long-Dreamed-of Routes by Emanuel Pietrobon
The average cost of shipping a container from Mumbai to Moscow is around $3,000 via the Suez route but could drop to approximately $2,000 using the INSTC. However, political tensions and regional instability pose risks, and infrastructure development is still needed to fully untap its potential. Huge investments and huge diplomatic efforts are mandatory to make all the INSTC's stops safe, and thus attractive for want-to-be investors and merchants: Azerbaijan and Armenia must settle the Karabakh issue once and for all, India and Pakistan must solve the Kashmir question, and Israel and Iran must find a modus vivendi.
Modus vivendi is a Latin phrase that means "mode of living" or "way of life". In international relations, it often is used to mean an arrangement or agreement that allows conflicting parties to coexist in peace.
So there are only three intractable problems that will need to be solved. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen, but with enough money I suppose anything is possible.
Sunday, September 1, 2024
Houthis
Houthi fighters take over a cargo ship (Houthi Movement via Getty Images) |
Why the Houthis now rule the Red Sea - America has silently admitted defeat by Malcolm Kyeyune
Excerpt:
This should probably be huge news: one of the most important trade routes in the world is now blocked by a rag-tag group of militants, and the US Navy has thrown its hands up in defeat and sailed away. And yet, we just don’t want to talk about it.
Basically it sounds like tactics and our hide-bound military has yet to adapt. They are rightfully hidebound I might add, I mean it's tradition to be hide-bound, that is, until you start getting your ass kicked by the new kid on the block. I'm sure they will adapt, eventually, hopefully before the collapse of civilization, but whatever.
Malcolm does make the argument that maybe Europe should be doing the heavy lifting here, after all they are the ones being most impacted by these hijackings. Europe might be able to contribute more to this endeavor if they hadn't been listening to the USA telling them to quit buying cheap gas from Russia.
Note - the ship in the picture is RORO - a ship for transporting automobiles. RORO stands for roll on, roll off, and that big thing sticking up on the right rear of the ship is a ramp that folds down to enable cars to be driven on and off of the ship. My main point being that it is NOT the tanker that was recently attacked.
I'm surprised to see the helicopter in the picture. I thought all these hijackings were being done by guys in speedboats.
Movie Magic
This Invention Made Disney MILLIONS, but Then They LOST It!
Corridor Crew
Walt Disney's MultiPlane Camera (Filmed: Feb. 13, 1957)
fireurgunz