Most cities in the new world are laid out in grids. All you need to get around Calgary is a ruler. Montreal is
very much a grid, but a tilted one that follows geography. And long, skinny ribbon-farm-like blocks, reflecting its French heritage.
The town that makes me shake my head is Bellingham, Washington. A new(-ish) city, but since it was assembled by amalgamating three towns with their own street grids, it always give me a headache when I'm there.
Give it a break kiddies. Trump won. Fair and square. Get the fuck over it.
FWIW I've visited the U.S.A. twice during the Trump administration. In both cases U.S. officials confirmed my identity
and citizenship through my passport, confirmed that I was legit in their computer,
asked me a couple of questions about my planned activities in the U.S., "Have a good trip!", off I went.
The Customs dude at Blaine, Washington asked "Idaho? I thought everybody was going to Oregon for that?"
when I went to see the eclipse last August. Is this the sort of customs/border/immigration nightmare people are talking about?
I'm going to an aviation event in Lakeland later this week and have set aside a day for shopping/exploring/chilling.
Skycraft is on my list. I've been there before, but it's been a while...
Many of the Big Leaps were killer apps that made people buy a computer for the sole purpose of running
that app. Things that changed what people did with computers.
Think spreadsheets, desktop publishing, WWW. We've had a convergence of networked data since the
early '90s. What next?
The last big leap (WWW) was a while ago. I can see why people might view tech as stagnant. It is. Computers
have gotten faster, more capable. But they don't do anything new.
All landings end with a pilot looking out the window
and deciding "yeah, that looks about right". The magnetic compass and the
data it generates are one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Yes, I'm aware of things like Category 2 ILS, but they don't do stuff like that unless they
absolutely have to.
They should just use the geographical headings instead of magnetic headings.
In the northernmost parts of Canada we do. The magnetic variation is large and varies rapidly
in the high Arctic, so all headings (runways, navigation, etc.) are in degrees true. With little in the way of
ground infrastructure all altitudes are standard pressure, i.e. flight levels.
A couple of airports around here (CZBB, KBFI) recently renumbered runways.
My home airport's main runway (CYNJ) 01/19 has magnetic headings of 015 and 195. One more degree and
they'll think about renumbering it.
By high-tech standards I'm ancient (56). I have a pretty good gig going at the moment, but
if (when) it ends, I will change careers because I know I'll be unemployable.
Technologically, I've kept an eye on newer tech and have been active in deploying
it in the company. We've replaced a major part of our company, a legacy communication system that ran on custom no-longer-available
hardware, with Linux and VoIP running on COTS servers. We like it because it works better.
The bean counters like it because it costs less and the new boxes come with warrantees.
My boss and I agree to disagree on scripting languages. He likes perl. I like python.:-)
I always recommend a pinhole camera. Zero cost from stuff you already have lying around.
Zero chance of frying your eyes since you are looking at a screen with the sun at your back.
Me? I'll flip a coin between my Coronado PST and a small travel scope with a Baader mylar filter. Cherry red or a
faint bluish tinge...
As a senior engineer I'm expected to keep an eye out for technology that may be useful for the company.
I set time aside to poke around, see what's out there, and play with new stuff. Some of this may end up being
only of personal interest, while some of it may end up being useful for the company. Until I have a look at it,
I won't know.
I'll spend half a day on something on my own responsibility, a morning or an afternoon, before I seek buy-in from my boss to
proceed further.
I played with Basic in high school but did my first undergrad stuff in ALGOL-W. As an
undergrad I messed with Pascal, Fortran and PL/I. One of my profs at the time was an author of the ALGOL 68 report,
thought BCPL was cool and that C (a relatively new language at the time) was a mental disorder.
He gave us an assignment in APL once. I guess I'm showing my age.
Now I do 99% of my work in C. My boss and I agree to disagree on scripting languages. I like Python.
He thinks Python is ridiculous and insists on Perl for production work.
Some years ago I had a university professor who was of Greek extraction, and he pronounced the names of the English
and Greek letters the same, "pee". The coursework (communications) involved lots of probability distributions, so both came up frequently.
You had to pay attention.
The media are all over small plane crashes much the same way, giving a highly distorted view of just how safe
aviation is. Aviation organizations like
AOPA have started to get on the media's case about this.
If they reported car crashes with the same enthusiasm the "news" would be nothing but car crashes.
It's radio. Anybody in the vicinity can listen in all they like. Back in the bad old days this was
Industry Canada's position, that cellphones were not private and there was nothing anybody could do about it.
Unlike AMPS, the communications are digital. So what. If you are sufficiently determined you can
decode the data you have captured.
If push came to shove I'd set up dummy Facebook and Twitter accounts and let CBP see them. No good way to tell which
of the several hundred Laura Hallidays on Facebook is me. Post some pictures of cats, a few likes, done.
I already engage in some self-censorship. There are a few CDs (mainly Russian and Israeli acts) I leave at home when I cross the border.
I accept that advertising is what supports platforms like Facebook (indeed, just about everything on the internet),
but please remember the user in all of this. My computer is mine. My browser is mine. Monopolizing it while you
play an irrelevant auto-play video is just not cool.
Facebook is relatively tame in this respect. I've seen worse.
I remember a few years ago seeing that my Amex was about to expire, and wondering when my new card was going to arrive.
Then I got a phone call from American Express. Had my new card arrived? No. Did I live alone? Yes. Did I know
any men with Russian accents? Uh, no...
Yup: somebody had stolen my card and had gone on a shopping spree with it, triggering security alerts. My bill that month was about 50 pages,
interesting charges (all local, curiously), then pages of Credit for Fraudulent Charge. I asked what my liability in the matter was and they said zero: unlike most
other credit cards, American Express cards may only be used by the cardholder ("non-transferrable"), and if the merchants
hadn't verified the identity of somebody who was really unlikely to be named "Laura", that was their problem, not mine.
A long time ago I was working with GPS applications and their internal representation of longitude meant our Null Island
was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 0 north, 180 west.
We figured out the conventions of the mapping application we were using (no Google Maps yet, and the documentation was vague)
by trial and error. Our first attempts to plot GPS fixes from a drive along a local freeway showed a blank area with no freeway,
nor much of anything else. We found that we were drawing a map centred on 49 degrees north (correct) but 123 degrees east,
out in the middle of nowhere near the border between China, Mongolia and Russia. Nearest town Harbin, China...
I bought my TV to be a TV. I measured the space it needed to fit in,
then looked at candidates at the store and picked
the one that looked best. It has an ATSC tuner and various inputs with various things (Apple TV, Roku, DVD player) plugged in to them.
My Apple TV and Roku do all the smart TV stuff I've ever wanted to do.
I've never seen a standalone smart TV that was worth the money.
Slashdot Mirror
Most cities in the new world are laid out in grids. All you need to get around Calgary is a ruler. Montreal is very much a grid, but a tilted one that follows geography. And long, skinny ribbon-farm-like blocks, reflecting its French heritage.
The town that makes me shake my head is Bellingham, Washington. A new(-ish) city, but since it was assembled by amalgamating three towns with their own street grids, it always give me a headache when I'm there.
...laura
Actually, my point was that it's business as usual at the border.
...laura
Give it a break kiddies. Trump won. Fair and square. Get the fuck over it.
FWIW I've visited the U.S.A. twice during the Trump administration. In both cases U.S. officials confirmed my identity and citizenship through my passport, confirmed that I was legit in their computer, asked me a couple of questions about my planned activities in the U.S., "Have a good trip!", off I went.
The Customs dude at Blaine, Washington asked "Idaho? I thought everybody was going to Oregon for that?" when I went to see the eclipse last August. Is this the sort of customs/border/immigration nightmare people are talking about?
...laura
I'm going to an aviation event in Lakeland later this week and have set aside a day for shopping/exploring/chilling. Skycraft is on my list. I've been there before, but it's been a while...
...laura
Many of the Big Leaps were killer apps that made people buy a computer for the sole purpose of running that app. Things that changed what people did with computers. Think spreadsheets, desktop publishing, WWW. We've had a convergence of networked data since the early '90s. What next?
The last big leap (WWW) was a while ago. I can see why people might view tech as stagnant. It is. Computers have gotten faster, more capable. But they don't do anything new.
...laura
All landings end with a pilot looking out the window and deciding "yeah, that looks about right". The magnetic compass and the data it generates are one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Yes, I'm aware of things like Category 2 ILS, but they don't do stuff like that unless they absolutely have to.
...laura
They should just use the geographical headings instead of magnetic headings.
In the northernmost parts of Canada we do. The magnetic variation is large and varies rapidly in the high Arctic, so all headings (runways, navigation, etc.) are in degrees true. With little in the way of ground infrastructure all altitudes are standard pressure, i.e. flight levels.
A couple of airports around here (CZBB, KBFI) recently renumbered runways. My home airport's main runway (CYNJ) 01/19 has magnetic headings of 015 and 195. One more degree and they'll think about renumbering it.
...laura
By high-tech standards I'm ancient (56). I have a pretty good gig going at the moment, but if (when) it ends, I will change careers because I know I'll be unemployable.
Technologically, I've kept an eye on newer tech and have been active in deploying it in the company. We've replaced a major part of our company, a legacy communication system that ran on custom no-longer-available hardware, with Linux and VoIP running on COTS servers. We like it because it works better. The bean counters like it because it costs less and the new boxes come with warrantees.
My boss and I agree to disagree on scripting languages. He likes perl. I like python. :-)
...laura
Or, for that matter, Brainfuck?
...laura
I always recommend a pinhole camera. Zero cost from stuff you already have lying around. Zero chance of frying your eyes since you are looking at a screen with the sun at your back.
Me? I'll flip a coin between my Coronado PST and a small travel scope with a Baader mylar filter. Cherry red or a faint bluish tinge...
...laura
Facebook is clickbait. By definition, since that's how they make money.
...laura
As a senior engineer I'm expected to keep an eye out for technology that may be useful for the company. I set time aside to poke around, see what's out there, and play with new stuff. Some of this may end up being only of personal interest, while some of it may end up being useful for the company. Until I have a look at it, I won't know.
I'll spend half a day on something on my own responsibility, a morning or an afternoon, before I seek buy-in from my boss to proceed further.
...laura
I played with Basic in high school but did my first undergrad stuff in ALGOL-W. As an undergrad I messed with Pascal, Fortran and PL/I. One of my profs at the time was an author of the ALGOL 68 report, thought BCPL was cool and that C (a relatively new language at the time) was a mental disorder. He gave us an assignment in APL once. I guess I'm showing my age.
Now I do 99% of my work in C. My boss and I agree to disagree on scripting languages. I like Python. He thinks Python is ridiculous and insists on Perl for production work.
...laura
Some years ago I had a university professor who was of Greek extraction, and he pronounced the names of the English and Greek letters the same, "pee". The coursework (communications) involved lots of probability distributions, so both came up frequently. You had to pay attention.
...laura
Here's a video taking one apart and reverse-engineering it to see why it's so crappy.
You get what you pay for.
...laura
The media are all over small plane crashes much the same way, giving a highly distorted view of just how safe aviation is. Aviation organizations like AOPA have started to get on the media's case about this.
If they reported car crashes with the same enthusiasm the "news" would be nothing but car crashes.
...laura
It's radio. Anybody in the vicinity can listen in all they like. Back in the bad old days this was Industry Canada's position, that cellphones were not private and there was nothing anybody could do about it.
Unlike AMPS, the communications are digital. So what. If you are sufficiently determined you can decode the data you have captured.
...laura
For real!
If push came to shove I'd set up dummy Facebook and Twitter accounts and let CBP see them. No good way to tell which of the several hundred Laura Hallidays on Facebook is me. Post some pictures of cats, a few likes, done.
I already engage in some self-censorship. There are a few CDs (mainly Russian and Israeli acts) I leave at home when I cross the border.
...laura
I accept that advertising is what supports platforms like Facebook (indeed, just about everything on the internet), but please remember the user in all of this. My computer is mine. My browser is mine. Monopolizing it while you play an irrelevant auto-play video is just not cool.
Facebook is relatively tame in this respect. I've seen worse.
...laura
I remember a few years ago seeing that my Amex was about to expire, and wondering when my new card was going to arrive.
Then I got a phone call from American Express. Had my new card arrived? No. Did I live alone? Yes. Did I know any men with Russian accents? Uh, no...
Yup: somebody had stolen my card and had gone on a shopping spree with it, triggering security alerts. My bill that month was about 50 pages, interesting charges (all local, curiously), then pages of Credit for Fraudulent Charge. I asked what my liability in the matter was and they said zero: unlike most other credit cards, American Express cards may only be used by the cardholder ("non-transferrable"), and if the merchants hadn't verified the identity of somebody who was really unlikely to be named "Laura", that was their problem, not mine.
...laura
A long time ago I was working with GPS applications and their internal representation of longitude meant our Null Island was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 0 north, 180 west.
We figured out the conventions of the mapping application we were using (no Google Maps yet, and the documentation was vague) by trial and error. Our first attempts to plot GPS fixes from a drive along a local freeway showed a blank area with no freeway, nor much of anything else. We found that we were drawing a map centred on 49 degrees north (correct) but 123 degrees east, out in the middle of nowhere near the border between China, Mongolia and Russia. Nearest town Harbin, China...
...laura
Step 1: Apple introduced the iPad and everybody was desperate to get one because it was the trendy item to have.
Step 2: people started figuring out what they could do with a handy portable computer.
Step 3: everybody who had a use for a tablet had one and the sales dropped off to replacement level.
Any remotely interesting new product is going to grow at unsustainable levels until the market is saturated. Then the growth stops.
...laura
If you want to use less air conditioning, don't live in Dallas. Or Phoenix. Or Las Vegas.
...laura
I bought my TV to be a TV. I measured the space it needed to fit in, then looked at candidates at the store and picked the one that looked best. It has an ATSC tuner and various inputs with various things (Apple TV, Roku, DVD player) plugged in to them.
My Apple TV and Roku do all the smart TV stuff I've ever wanted to do. I've never seen a standalone smart TV that was worth the money.
...laura