Gilbert Garcin

you have to think about the consequences

Gilbert Garcin has been making odd pictures ever since he retired. Via Metafilter

The History of Video

The History of Video
I thought I had a pretty good grasp of how video evolved. I was wrong. I'm better now.

Previous post, a video from S. G. Collins, covers some of the same material.

Muskegon Project

Reroofing house at Lake Muskegon

Uniberp reports:

Somehow my addled brain considers roofing the most manly of tasks, but like I said, I'm addled. I am still hoping to have this place habitable by summer but be warned any visitors will be pressed into service without humor, because i am increasingly defensive about the worth of this project.

It took several weeks of daily stairmaster to work up to this 4 day task (1 prepare, 2 strip old roof three layers, 3 rest and take 1320 lbs to dump, 4 cover with ice dam waterproofing) and that's one half of the roof. Recovered ok, i think, so far, maybe.

Well it depends on the neighborhood. Up here it can be done cheap. My criteria was city water/sewer/sidewalks with some amenities and open water nearby.
Almost anything you would buy, though, would benefit from a gut rehab. In that sense, only houses up to about 1955 were built with lumber, not plywood or osb. [Zillow listings]
At these prices it's of marginal benefit. Timing is everything. Boots on the ground give you an even better advantage. I think wait until the next crash. I anticipate a significant dip next year. The yield curve has inverted, and I think the market response will be a lot quicker this time through. 

As I get further into it, my panics about structural integrity lessen. It is actually fairly sound, despite being chopped up and sorely neglected. I was able to comfortably stand on the roofing planks, although some are showing dry rot in spots, but largely solid. Hence, steel roof will be easiest to install. Mind you I am doing this as probably the last restoration for this place. In 50 years it will need to be demolished, if there is a civilization, that is. 

I have no idea what living there would be like, it could be harleys and breaking glass all night. I hope not, but ya never know.

The weather/climate is the big factor. It is just getting tolerable outside. WInter was hard from Dec1 until now, almost 4 months. I would like to think I could spend 4 months a year writing by the fire, but maybe not. I may have to camp south.

Roofing is high because nobody can do it themselves. It's brutal. Your friends and relatives would never speak to you again if you recruited them. 

Everyplace is going to suck in some way. If it's all nice, you have to pay excessively. If it's reasonably priced, you have to put up with morons occasionally.

Previous posts on this project.

• Uniberp's Progress
• Uniberp's Latest Project

Are We Stupid?

The cruise ship Viking Sky arrives at port off Molde, Norway, on Sunday after having problems and issuing a "mayday" call in heavy seas off Norway's western coast. (Svein Ove Ekornesvag/NTB scanpix via AP)

We are all on board the express train to hell, or maybe I should say cruise ship. Rough weather started the engine lubricating oil to sloshing about in the tank, which caused the oil level sensors to sound an alarm, which caused the artificially stupid engine controller to shut down the engines, which set off panic amongst just about everyone.

WTF? No engineer on board? Well, maybe not, after all, we have a sophisticated engine control system so we will not have the problem that we had. We're seeing the same situation with airliners falling out of the sky. We are putting people in command of these complex machines, people who don't have a complete understanding of the machines under their control. It's a dilemma. Our control systems have become very sophisticated and most of the time, everything works perfectly. It's only in those rare instances that something goes wrong, and in those cases the only person who can save you is the one who knows more than the control system does. Those people are few and far between and becoming fewer everyday. Someone who knows enough to save the ship in that rare instance when things go wrong is going to be very bored babysitting a system that will likely never fail. If you are running a business, are you going to pay the big bucks necessary to have a talented person sitting around when you can hire a novice for a fraction of the cost, a novice who will more than likely be able to competently handle the job?

One hundred people paying $100 a seat for a short flight comes to $10K. One million similar flights adds up to ten billion dollars. One plane crashes where everyone dies happens once out of 300 million flights (my guesstimate). How often could one of those been averted if a super competent person had been in charge? How many of those happened where there was a super competent person in charge, but that super competent person had gone off the rails for some reason?

Automobile accidents still make the local news, but if you want national headlines, you need a major disaster. There are any number of ways to die. Life is a gamble. Place your bets accordingly.

Supersonic

Shockwaves from two T-38 aircraft flying supersonic - NASA

This photo was taken from a Beechcraft King Air that was flying above the T-38's. Since the T-38's were traveling like three times as fast as the Beech, timing was critical.

NASA Beechcraft King Air flying over the giant compass rose at Edwards Air Force Base in California

They did this before using ground based cameras shooting at the sun, which provided a nice collimated light source.


NASA Supersonic Flights Validate Flightworthiness for Future Schlieren Imaging
How they got the most recent image while looking at the ground is a mystery.

Shopping Center Liquor

Burnside Bourbon

Eastside Distilling Tasting Room at Washington Square

Stopped by Washington Square the other day. My wife had business at Nordstrom so I'm wandering around killing time and I notice this liquor store. Never seen a liquor store in a shopping mall before so I pay a visit. It's not a regular liquor store, they only carry liquor from Eastside Distilling. They had a dozen different flavors, mostly rum and bourbon. I like bourbon, and I'm all in favor of small, craft distilleries, so I bought a bottle ($37). I don't know if it's great, but it's pretty good, it doesn't have any of that bite that you get with cheap liquor. I don't know if they are really distilling their own stuff. It looks more like a marketing outfit that is buying whiskey from one place and having it bottled someplace else, but it's good enough.

Wages of Fear

Truck explosion kills 1 in south Arkansas
A truck carrying ammonium nitrate caught fire and exploded in Arkansas yesterday. I'm looking at the crater that was left behind and it reminds me of the movie The Wages of Fear that I saw in a French film class in college. This connection may have been prompted by this post on The Grønmark Blog about the director Henri-Georges Clouzot. DailyMotion has the entire movie.

The thing that gets me about this is that the truck is gone.