Things are starting to go back to normalish

 awesomeness, blather, cats, photography  4 Responses »
Aug 102014
 

All four of ’em sacked out in reasonably close proximity:

WP_20140810_016

Buttons is in good spirits now. After the earlier part of the day when he was clearly upset (he wanted *something,* but durned if I could figure out what, apart from perhaps just a general sense of unease about the uncertain nature of life), he has now settled back into his old self. At this very moment he is sleep-purring just a few feet away.

But as content as Buttons may be just now, it is as nothing compared to the unutterable joy felt by Fingers when the photos were taken. Might not be so clear in the photo above, but the one below shows that she is right where she most likes to be…

 

WP_20140810_018

 Posted by at 12:40 am

One-stop lunar base

 art, nukes, projects, rockets, spacecraft  4 Responses »
Aug 092014
 

A 1963 Douglas concept for a simple lunar base: a small pressurized hab that carries with it a robotic “snowblower” that, under control from Earth, spews lunar dirt atop the hab. This is done to provide radiation/thermal/meteoroid shielding. If the hab is actually a “wet lab,” i.e. the actual upper stage, formerly filled with propellants, then this could be a reasonably cost effective approach. The robot is nuclear powered, but it appears that the reactor is not mounted permanently on the robot. instead, the first thing it would seem to do is haul the reactors some distance away, dig a hole, and then burying it (or at least place the reactor in the hole). Extensive power cabling would be needed.

lunar base 63

 Posted by at 11:46 pm

BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 awesomeness, blather, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., humor, news, Obamazombies, politics, ಠ_ಠ  4 Responses »
Aug 092014
 

OK, first there was this bit of whiny hand-wringing:

Smiling Young White People Make App for Avoiding Black Neighborhoods

The “app” under discussion is called “Sketchy.” What it does is collate local crime data and tells you what neighborhoods are more or less crime-riddled, i.e. “sketchy.” It seems a reasonable enough sort of app to have if you are going to visit some city that you are unfamiliar with. As everyone knows, every sizable city *does* have sections that are higher or lower in crime, and if you are a stranger, it might be unwise to go wandering into The Bad Part Of Town. But this idea bothers some people, such as the author of the piece (one Sam Biddle), who bleated:

Is there any way to keep white people from using computers, before this whole planet is ruined? I ask because the two enterprising white entrepreneurs above just made yet another app for avoiding non-white areas of your town—and it’s really taking off!

The app doesn’t factor in local ethnicities, just the crime rates. That Biddle equates “crime” with “non-white” says more about *him* than the makers of the app, I would think.

Anyway, over the past day or two this opinion piece has gained some notoriety online, as happens often enough. But spectacularly, a local news crew decided to actually procure and use the app. WUSA9 sent a film crew into a “sketchy” neighborhood and, well…

WUSA9 Crew vehicle burglarized in DC

The crew had locked their news van on a street in Petworth in Northwest, D.C. while they were out in the neighborhood conducting interviews. When they returned they found the lock had been popped out of the door of their news van, and that the most of the crew’s gear had been stolen.

So… it would seem that the app does *precisely* what it says it’s supposed to do.

 

 Posted by at 11:27 pm

Buttons has returned

 awesomeness, cats, news  7 Responses »
Aug 092014
 

This morning another round of X-rays and blood tests showed nothing wrong with his innards and that his white cell count was back to normal. The conclusion was that he had a GI tract infection that the antibiotics have – apparently – cleared up. Consequently, the vets had me bring him home. So now we wait…

WP_20140809_009

 Posted by at 10:59 am

ATK: Back To the Future

 news, rockets, spacecraft  8 Responses »
Aug 092014
 

Much to my surprise, it’s looking like there might be more Shuttle (derived) booster tests out here in the near future:

ATK Passes Critical Design Review for NASA’s Space Launch System Booster

A ground static firing of the full-scale booster, Qualification Motor-1 (QM-1), is planned for late this year/early next year at ATK’s facility in Promontory, Utah.

A test firing such as this is a sight not to be missed.

 Posted by at 8:48 am

Tobacco-based avgas

 aircraft, blather, Hmm..., news, science  6 Responses »
Aug 092014
 

Boeing begins program to produce aviation biofuel from hybrid tobacco plants

Boeing is teaming with some South African companies to turn a type of tobacco plant with almost no nicotine into aviation fuel. It’s an interesting idea: unlike ethanol from corn, here if a farmer converts over to raising a fuel crop he’s not wiping out a food crop, but rather something of a “pest” crop. There are a whole lot of tobacco farmers around the world who might be just as willing to raise this type of tobacco as any other; the end result would theoretically include:

1) Less reliance upon fossil fuels (and the support-for-scumbags that goes with it)

2) A bit more of a “carbon neutral” fuel

3) The price of tobacco for smoking purposes might well begin to climb due to natural market forces

The advantage of #3 is that it would have the same effect on pricing smokers out of the habit as government taxes have, but without the societal burden of actually paying money into a government bureaucracy.

 Posted by at 8:04 am

ANED

 blather, books, drawings, history, nukes, weapons  3 Responses »
Aug 082014
 

I haven’t posted much on the “American Nuclear Explosive Devices” project lately. For those interested, don’t worry, work continues; just that since a lot of it is converting photos into CAD diagrams, then erasing a days work and starting over, then going at it again, and so on, it hasn’t been terribly interesting. But there is progress.

aned-02-011-Model

NOTE: I have in most cases high confidence in the accuracy of the external configurations of the nuclear weapons. The internal configuration, however, is rather less trustworthy. Most of the diagrams won’t go into the innards, as that would require pure guesswork on my part; but some do have internal arrangements available to some degree of reliability or another. None, with the possible exception of Fat Man, are detailed enough to build a functioning nuke off of, so no worries there.

 

 Posted by at 3:22 pm

Guardians of the Galaxy

 art, awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., humor, science fiction  26 Responses »
Aug 082014
 

Anybody remember this:

‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Will Be a Flop By Marvel Standards

As of one week in, BoxOfficeMojo.com sez…

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $126,759,442 57.8%
+ Foreign: $92,500,000 42.2%
= Worldwide: $219,259,442

On a budget of $170M. So it has made it’s money back in less than a week, and it’s still roaring along.

Look, before GotG came out, my reaction to it was “Huh? Wuzzat?” I’m not a big comic book guy in the first place, but I knew who Iron Man and Thor and Hulk were. GotG? Not a clue. It would not have surprised me at the time if it did turn out to be a financial fizzle. But then, earlier this week I actually saw it at the cheapo theater (I laugh at you schmoes who complain about having to plunk down $15 for a ticket; I pay $5.50 for first run, and just a couple bucks at the second-run theater), and my reaction was thus:

2181587-awesome___

(To be honest, my reaction was actually a bit more like THIS)

For what it was, GotG was prit near perfect. Did it make complete sense? Were the villains fully realized characters with depth? Was the science even remotely accurate? A big fat *no* to all. But what it was was entertaining.

One of the complaints about GotG was that the movie going public didn’t know who the characters were going in, unlike Bat Man or Iron Man. But I seem to recall a little movie that came out when I was seven that also had a bunch of characters I didn’t have pre-existing knowledge of. “Ben Kennobi? Darth Vader? R2-D2? Never heard of ’em. Doomed to failure.”

GotG ranks up there with Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark in being just an entertaining good time. Hell, it’s the first time I recall seeing a “dance-off” that didn’t make me want to change the channel.

GotG is, as has been reported elsewhere many, many times, good old fashioned space opera. It is not realistic, scientifically, but it’s beautifully rendered and it just looks like the sort of universe you *want* to exist. It is not a horribly depressing dystopian view; yes, there’s badguys, yes, there are evil empires; but they can be defeated by the joint efforts not only of organized military but also armed civilians just out looking to make a buck.

Plus, racoons with machine guns.

awesome

 Posted by at 12:03 pm

More Buttons

 AARRRGH, cats, news, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Aug 082014
 

The vets didn’t do the barium xray study today, because new bloodwork showed a big spike in white cell count, indicating an infection. They think the infection is in his bowels. He’s on intravenous antibiotics; they express confidence that that will do the trick over the next 24 to 48 hours. The string theory has apparently moved lower in likelihood.

Unhelpful: the vet called earlier in the day, the call went straight to voice mail and a message was left… but there is no message. This seems to happen with some friggen’ regularity with this phone. Does it sound familiar? The phone is on, charged, full bars, but calls go straight to voicemail and the mail messages vanish, sometime appearing hours later. Is it a problem with the AT&T system? Or with the phone itself? Texts work just fine. Outgoing calls work just fine.

 Posted by at 11:24 am
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