Ratatat - Loud Pipes

Ratatat - Loud Pipes
Just something that popped up on YouTube that I really like.

Caravan Palace - Suzy

Caravan Palace - Suzy
I'm sitting outside, chilling, literally, and playing tunes on my laptop and this pops up. The tune and the video are both pretty great.

Radio Waves

Big Antennaes

I am always surprised when I come across a new-to-me giant radio antennae. You'd think I'd learn, but for some reason it is always a bit of a shock. This week's shocker is the Jim Creek Naval Radio Station, which is just north of Seattle, which puts it in my proverbial backyard. Why haven't I heard about this place before? Probably because I'm not hanging with the right crowd, i.e. the extreme radio conspiracy nuts. Well, I'm busy, there are just too many conspiracy theories running around loose out there for me to be able to keep track of them all.


Naval Radio Station Jim Creek
Jim Creek is a VLF station that is used for communicating with our submarines, which reminded me that I came across another one of these on the west coast of Australia a while back. That in turn prompted me to extract all of the radio antennaes I had recorded in my Big Science Map and make up the map you see above.

Talking to Jack at lunch the other day about my new discovery, he tells me that he had an old VLF war surplus receiver, which prompted to wonder if anyone was picking up these VLF signals.


Receiving VLF with PC and software only
Why, yes, there are a whole bunch of people playing with this, which isn't too surprising since all it takes is a PC and a sound card.

So now I'm wondering if anyone has been able to decrypt these signals. Rooting around I find that since the data rate is so low, the Navy sends out short code words, like five letters long, that stand for prearranged commands, like surface so we can talk to you, or serve mashed potatoes for dinner, or something. So even if you could decrypt these signals, you would still need the code book to interpret them, and then all you might learn is what's on tonight's menu.

Extreme Ridiculousness

TOYO TIRES | Ken Block’s Climbkhana: Pikes Peak Featuring the Hoonicorn V2
This has been sitting in my inbox for the last three days and I have been carefully avoiding it, but today I'm feeling a little weak and succumbed to the lure of the twin sirens of speed and power. I can't think of a more foolish waste of time and money, but I still watched the whole thing. You have to give Monsieur Block credit for finding a way to make money off of this nonsense. I mean, I hope he's making money, he certainly has enough commercial tie-ins to his hot rod empire.

People have been entranced by speed from the beginning (like a billion years ago, whenever the microbes first developed motility). If you are faster than the other guy / animal / entity you can escape their clutches -or- bring your clutches to bear, depending on whether you are the pursued or the pursuer. We'll leave out who which ones are good or bad, it all depends on your frame of reference and your allegiances. I know where my allegiances lie, or at least I think I do. How about you? Do you know where your allegiances lie?

Via Road & Track

Rules of Acquisition

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition - Complete List* ManticoreEscapee
I used to be a fan of Star Trek and some of its derivatives, and since Star Trek seems to be part and parcel of American Culture, I kind of thought that everyone knew about the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. A passing encounter with younger son disabused me of that notion. If he doesn't know about this, then how many other people out there in internet land are also ignorant of this cultural icon? So, this video.

Via Dustbury

Update February 2021 replaced missing video.

Me & Linux

I just spent an hour cleaning out old files on my Linux box.  Lately I had noticed that sometimes the web browser stalls while the hard disk is getting hammered. Looking in Files (the Linux file management program) I see that I have about 5 GB of space left. I have tried deleting some things, but it hasn't made a noticeable difference, I still had only about 5 GB of free space. I could have opened my Linux reference book and read up on the subject, but hey, we've got the internet, so I posted a question on the Linux Mint Forum and I quickly got several helpful responses, one of which included this bit of Linux weenie cryptography.

sudo du -chd1 / --exclude={proc,dev,sys,media,mnt,run,tmp,lost*,cdrom}

It's a command-line command, copy it (using normal browser controls)  and then paste it into a Terminal window (using special Terminal window controls) and I quickly have an overview of who's sucking up all the space. It's me, of course, and all the crap I have been dragging around with me every time I change computers. Changing directories (using the cd command) and repeated applications of

sudo du -chd1 .

(the dot means operate on the current directory) allows me to track down the biggest offender, which turned out to be about six levels down. Deleting a bunch of ancient crap makes me feel better, but it doesn't do anything for my bottom line, which still shows only 5 GB of disk space. (5 GB!?! Back in the day when I got started in this business we were lucky to have 10 MB.) Empty the trash, silly, and suddenly we have 30 GB of free space. That should be enough room to play with for a couple of months or so.

Now I'm looking at the forum and I realize my avatar is a blind snowman standing in front of a concrete wall. Not exactly putting my brand out there. We ought to do something about that, so I root around and find a copy of the image to upload, but the forum doesn't support uploading. They want a link to a photo that is already on the web. Well, I am the master of my internet browser, I should be able to deliver that, except I can't.

I try using the link to the avatar from this blog, but it goes nowhere. Stealing the link from the page source works, but the image is too big. I try uploading the photo to Google Drive, but it won't provide a link to the photo, but it will export it to Imgur, except it won't. So enough screwing around with these fancy web services that don't work, let's fall back to old reliable (sort of) Blogger, so that's how we come to have this post with the tiny little picture of me at the top.

Update 2 minutes later: using the link to the picture from this blog post worked!

Chimneys

Dominik Sky - Human Flag on 360 meters (1181 feet) HD
I don't much care for videos of people engaging in foolish, dangerous actions. Plus they make my hands sweat. This guy is hanging off the top of the chimney at the Trbovlje Power Station in Slovenia, the tallest in Europe.

A high chimney was required for the site to ensure that emissions were removed from the deep, narrow valley under all weather conditions.

It's the tallest chimney in Europe, but not in the world. For that we have to go Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan.

Ekibastuz GRES-2 Power Station
Wikipedia link, photo is from Panarimo.

Kazakhstan is also home to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, site of all our manned space flight launches.

My only encounter with a tall chimney happened a couple of years ago. And then there's Fred.

Name	Height in Feet	Year Built
GRES-2 Power Station, Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan	1377	1987
Trbovlje Chimney	1181	1976
Anaconda Smelter Stack	585	1919
India Mill Chimney (Fred)	279	1867

Video via Jack.