The Milky Way over Thatcher, Utah:
A higher rez version, and a second panorama, are OVER HERE.
Jun 242012
Jun 232012
Earlier this week I was pondering how it’s been, so far, a fairly mild summer. Well, that crap has come to an end with high temps pushing 100 degrees the past few days. Below is a panorama of the area as of Thursday… note that there is something seriously wrong with the clouds. They look like they’re melting or dissolving. It’s something that happens on hot days at high altitude (at least, that’s been my experience). I’ve posted a substantial pile of other panoramas from Thursday HERE.
Jun 232012
Good news: my new PC finally showed up. A Dell X8500-1053BK with an intell I5-3450 processor, 8GB, 1TB hard drive and a 1GB Radeon HD 7570 graphics card. This *should* cover my CAD needs.
Bad news: the old hard drive was found to be deader’n hell. The power supply was also fried. So I’m guessing that there was a hell of a power surge… got past both the surge protector and the battery power supply. Grrr.
ARGH news: a bit over a year ago, I spent a day in the Bell aircraft archive in Niagra Falls, NY. I made a buttload of scans and photos. These files were all carefully sorted and filed, and stored on a backup drive and the PC drive. The backup drive went fzzzzt a few months ago, but fortunately I had backed *it* up. Then the PC drive went fzzzt.
But… it appears that when I backed up the backup hard drive, somehow the Bell stuff slipped through the cracks. *All* the Bell stuff. Gone. Kaput.
arrgh.
I’m contemplating doing another “investor funded” trip at some point to recover this stuff. A hard drive recovery would cost $2000, and is uncertain that it would work… a trip to rescan stuff would cost half that, and get more stuff.
Also: the loss of this hard drive has some more immediate problems. All of my CD burning was off this PC and hard drive. This is now no longer possible. So… if you are one of the several customers who have been waiting for a CD of APRs and photos and such… there will be a bit of a delay as I dig through the backup drives to rebuild the CD burning files.
Argh.
Jun 232012
A few days ago I posted about some horrible brats who verbally abused a bus monitor. My opinion then as now was that these kids need to be Dealt With Harshly. Also, at the time someone set up a fund to give the monitor a vacation… something I saw as awesome. It has, however, grown to a seriously ridiculous level… as of right now it has collected $609,000. OK, that’s just a whole hell of a lot.
And on the other side of the pond…
RAGING BOY OF 10 BREAKS TEACHER’S LEGS
The headline is not exactly accurate… instead of breaking legs, he kicked and broke one teachers kneecap, and he head butted another teacher, gifting her a complete set of headaches, tinnitus and blurred vision. This was apparently caught on security camera, but it doesn’t appear to have been made public.
So, it should prove instructive to see if there is a similar level of outrage, and similar levels of donations, in this case. Objectively, there should be… the teachers should rake in *millions,* if there was any consistency. But I suspect that this will be just about the only time this incident will make any sort of news.
Partly I believe it’s due to the lack of a compelling video. Let’s face it, we all react more to a good video of an event (someone getting bullied, a drone strike, 9/11, a sleeping kitten, etc.) than a mere text or verbal description of the event. Also: we have a limited store of give-a-damn. I suspect bus monitor lady lucked out and won the “we really care lottery.”
Jun 222012
Voyager 1 at the Final Frontier
In short: V’Ger 1 is detecting a sudden increase in cosmic rays… indicating that it is at the edge of the heliosphere. This is the “bubble” around the solar system formed by the suns magnetic field. Within this bubble, the suns forces dominate… outside the bubble, the sun is insufficiently powerful to counter the rest of the universe. So, cosmis rays, which are partially mitigated by the heliosphere, are allowed to run riot in interstellar space… and it seems that V’Ger 1 is about there.
Jun 222012
If you’re of a certain age and a certain fantype, this will be of interest:
[youtube 0EqbCzLinAM]
If you’re not, well…
Keep an eye out for what is either the awesomest, or the goofiest, mustache produced by the lamentable 1970’s.
Jun 222012
Stepped outside this evening to find this… horrible… thing in my yard squawking up a storm. I have no good idea what species it is, and I’ve no good idea how it could’ve got there. Best I have is that a predator carried it off from where it originated and dropped it in my yard for reasons unknown. Seemed unharmed except for being obviously hungry. The only use I’d have for it here is as a cat toy; fortunately, the neighbors have children. I have doubts they’ll make a go of it, but, well, better them than me.
Anybody know what species it is? I’m thinking perhaps wild turkey.
Jun 212012
The way a normal auction works:
Bidder A bids $100
Bidder b bids $150
Bidder C bids $200
So, bidder c wins, pays his $200, collects his item. Bidders A and B take their money and go home.
OK.
Has anyone ever hear of an auction like this:
Bidder A bids $100
Bidder b bids $150
Bidder C bids $200
So, bidder c wins, pays his $200, collects his item. Bidder A pays his $100 and goes home empty handed. Bidder B pays his $150 and goes home empty handed.
It’d be an interesting thought experiment… how high would you bid on an item if you knew that you would be charged your high bid whether you won or not? Would this approach bring in a higher total income than the normal approach?
Jun 212012
A simple NASA-Lewis concept from 1971 for a nuclear-powered subsonic transport aircraft, clearly based on the Lockheed C-5. No other data available.
Jun 212012
Every summer, several birds of this species take up residence in my workshops gutters. They are very territorial, and will hover over me and “peep” angrily at me if I get too close to their nest. Anybody know what species this is?
I’ve posted more photos on the photo blog.