2018's Greatest Hits

As in the past, here are the best from each month along with some cross-eyed commentary.

Time for a Review of the FT-817nd   Backpacking will never be the same.
Backpacking the Tuxachanie Trail -- Finally!   Going back too, just as soon as deer season abates.
Backpacking & Playing Radio   A repeat of January's trip with a little more success.
Tall Ships in New Orleans   Part of their tricentennial celebration.
Jazz Fest on Locals Day   OCMS headlined and interesting food was eaten.
Small Errands & an Impromptu New Orleans Trip   New day pack, good coffee, and a new album.
Two Physics Articles   Safe nuclear power (if anyone wants it) and some interesting math.
Quick Book Review: Lost in Math   Been lost more than once, personally.
Coffeeneuring Challenge 2018   A series of posts about biking to coffee shops, centered on October.
Film Review: Prospect   Space western at its finest.
Movie Review: They Shall Not Grow Old   You should see this movie.

What happened to August?  Yeah, August, uh, yeah (shakes head).  On the whole, 2018 was a damn weird year in which I kept my head down working and having fun as the opportunities presented themselves.  Hurricane Michael also punched a big hole into things.  Other than a couple of bike-related items, I barely mentioned that whole mess here on the blog.  It's not that kind of a place.  Before moving on to 2019, here are two final entries.

(1) Dave Barry's Year in Review.  Everybody needs a laugh – and a wince.

(2) This pic from last January:



The plan is to keep focusing on days like that one.

New Horizons to Zoom Past Ultima Thule on New Year's

TLDR version: The New Horizons probe that got the first close look at Pluto in summer 2015 is slated to zip past an even more distant Kupier Belt object in the early hours of New Year's Day.  The flyby will occur at 12:33 am EST, but being just over 6 light-hours away we won't know how things went until almost 7 EST on New Year's morning.  We know next to nothing about this or for that matter any other KBO, so the flyby is sure to turn up something cool and unexpected.

You can find more details at:
space.com
Ars Technica
NASA's JPL site

Artist's concept of the flyby.  In reality, we have very little idea what this thing looks like, beyond (possibly) having two main masses.  Connected?  Orbiting each other?  No idea, the Hubble couldn't resolve much more than a slightly bi-blobular blur.  Exciting times!

Bicycle Times Hangs It Up

Just in today, Bicycle Times, the general cycling spin-off of the mountain bike magazine Dirt Rag, is completely calling it a day.  A year and a half ago they ceased print but kept on with the web site.  It seems that even that wasn't economically feasible.  Here's the letter from the publisher.

It's too damn bad about BT.  It was refreshing to have a bike magazine that wasn't all about racing and gram-shaving and the newest shiniest gear on the TdF course, but was truly about (as their tagline went) your everyday cycling adventure.

Onward to better things: It seems likely that this will allow Dirt Rag to beef up its its operation, and bring in more semi-mountain bike stuff like gravel rides into its fold.  That's a little bit of sunshine.  As for the rest, we shall see in 2019.  In the meantime, go over to the Dirt Rag site and consider subscribing.

RIP

In the "More Good News" Basket

New study finds that moderate coffee and alcohol consumption and packing a few extra pounds is correlated with longevity past age 90.  link

Can't argue with that.

Yaesu is Dutch?

Huh?  Seems that the Yaesu radio brand name is an evolution of a Dutch trader/explorer's name.  Here are the links:
Yaesu the radio
Yaesu the district
Joosten the man

Huh.  The random stuff you find on Wikipedia.  Well, now we know.  I always thought the name sounded a little strange.

The Christmas Comet Returns!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, will be back in a couple of days with the year-end wrap-up post.

Movie Review: The Expendables 3

Don't set your hopes too high for this one, just sit back with a glass of whisky and enjoy the explosions.  Of course there are some odd plot twists, and of course Mel Gibson is the hiss-at-him evil mastermind here.  As for the rest of the cast, it's just too much to list here.  It has enough of a plot  to hang the action on, all that can be expected.

I'm not sure why this movie got such low ratings from the critics.  It's not like any of these movies stood out, or tried to be anything more than they appear to be.  Maybe casting Gibson offended some sensibilities, or maybe it's just because a third helping was one too many for some.  Anyway, it was released in 2014, and almost five years on it seems unlikely any more will be made.  Wrapping it up with a third flick and going out with a bang feels about right.

Ridiculous?  Of course!  Big dumb fun?  You bet.  3 out of 4 stars.

ps: Expendables 4?  Sure why not.  Looks like it's in pre-production.

Some Encouragement on this Winter Solstice

If you've been looking a the news at all this week, you've probably seen something about this former NASA engineer's glitter-slinging, GPS tracking, video recording cure for porch piracy.  It is entertaining, and what's more, a little harmless comeuppance for these holiday-spoiling creeps feels about right.

But don't stop there.  The same guy has a whole upbeat youtube channel where he statistically tests peoples' honest with 200 "lost" wallets, talks with a physicist/biologist/inventor about a third world ready malaria test kit that costs $0.68, shows what a great investment NASA is, and a bunch of other things.

I started this day reading a really downbeat solstice blog post (no, no link; not spreading that misery around).  You, dear reader, deserve better.  Go watch some of those videos and get some joy there and at the prospect of more daylight tomorrow.

In the meantime, Merry Solstice!

The Day the 60's Ended

December 19th 1972, when the Apollo 17 CM successfully returned to Earth.  Details at This Day in Aviation.

The very next day, they wheeled out the polyester suits, disco music, mopeds, pet rocks, and gas lines.  The 70's were on.  At least, that's how my then 10 year old self remembers it.

Movie Review: They Shall Not Grow Old

Short and sweet: it's a 99 minute WWI documentary, made up of meticulously restored film clips, still photographs, and 60 year old recorded reminisces by veterans.  It respectfully shows the British soldiers' side of the war, from joining up, through training, deployment, hazards of the trenches, hazards of R&R, going 'over the top,' dealing with German P.O.W.s, the end of the war, and re-entry into post-war everyday society.

Comments and clips prior to the initial UK rerelease were blogged here back in October.  Go see for yourself, especially to click through to the film trailer and to hear an interview with Peter Jackson.

So, the two questions I had going in were: How well does it all work together?  And how does the restoration look on the big screen?  To answer the first, it's very good but not outstanding.  Anyone familiar with WWI has read about and seen photos of the hell of trench warfare, and this doesn't really present any truly new material.  However, where this movie shines is how the restoration brings the war into a much more relatable visual focus for modern audiences.  It sweeps away the noise and debris of time and archaic film technology, allowing us to see the soldiers as humans, not merely as the almost comic herky-jerky shadow figures that the cameras of the time turned them into.  That is the value Jackson and his team bring, and this is what makes this whole project worthwhile.

A small warning though, one that probably isn't needed but I feel compelled to say it anyway: There's a lot of restored battlefield gore here.  It's unavoidable and is not overwhelming for adults, but don't take the pre-teen set to this one.

One more thing to note, the full color restoration is only given to the segments filmed in France, with the portions shot in England largely left in their original form.  It's sort of a Wizard of Oz cinematography twist on things, where the war zone is the real world in living color, but back home things are still black-and-white.  It's an understandable choice, if only to allow resources to be concentrated on the war footage.

Back to the second question, about how it looks on the big screen.  It's good, but it's not super high definition viewing.  Overall, the main images of men and objects such as artillery are stable and devoid of image artifacts and noise, at least in the large scale.  However some of the texturing of uniformly colored objects, especially helmets, has a slightly disconcerting tendency to "swim," probably as a side-effect of the frame interpolation software used.  This doesn't show up in the small youtube clips, but on a big screen it's very noticeable.  But it's not bad, and in a lot of cases the original film was in pretty rough shape to begin with.   Retouching these images any more aggressively would probably breach the bounds of "restoration" and plunge into "CGI re-creation."  Jackson and company made the right calls on holding that line here, and I think it'll look just about right on a normal-sized home screen.

Which brings me to the two real questions: how many stars, and will I buy the disk version?  4 of 5 Stars and Yes.

Final Note: The next and only remaining U.S. viewing is upcoming on Dec. 27.  Check your local times, or resign yourself to waiting on the disk release.

Not Looking Real Promising...

Solar flux predictions for the next few years, and hence prospects for HF propagation, are looking poor:


Here, go read all about it at KB6NU's blog.

Ah well, there's always digital modes when the bands aren't good enough for voice.

The Last 40 Miles

This past year and a half, I've been tuning in to a weekly podcast, The First 40 Miles.  This coming Tuesday, they're wrapping it up after 4 years.  It's been a good trip, but you can tell that the hosts are straining under the load of restoring an old house, herding teenagers, maintaining gainful employment, and oh yes, finding time to go backpacking.  I wish them well and many more miles on the trails in 2019 and beyond.

If you missed this podcast and it sounds interesting to you, here is their archive page.  Good information in every episode.  As always, no guarantees how long these episodes will be around once they wrap things up, so get hopping if you want to download.

Deer season will be ending in a month here in Coastal MS, and with that begins the real backpacking season.  Can't wait to get going with that again.  I want to, one more time, thank Heather and Josh at The First 40 Miles for all the good advice, gear recommendations, and reports from their adventures.  Happy Trails!

This looks so much nicer than a pic of the view from the Tuxachanie Trail.  No such sweeping vistas in south MS, but the "vegetation tunnels" we have here have a charm of their own.

A brief and breezy history of the Theremin

Over at Messy Nessy.

That band in the last video really ought to do the soundtrack for the next Tim Burton movie.

Trust and More Trust

In a hurry this morning, I'm just here to re-direct you to an interesting short essay and its follow-up: Trust and About Trust.

That is all.  Back to your Monday morning activities.

20 Years of the ISS

The first U.S. module was launched to click together with the first Russian module, which had already been in orbit for about two weeks.  Article over at This Day in Aviation.

An InSight-ful Article

In case you blinked, the BBC has a well-written article to quickly get you up to speed on NASA's InSight Mars lander.

InSight is primarily a geology mission: seismometers, subsurface heat flow probe,  wobble-o-meter, weather station.  But don't worry, astrobiology fans.  The next round of landers in 2020 will look for those signatures.

Saturday in New Orleans

Bayou Bicycles – the CX bike needs a lot of work

[coffee interlude]

The Orleans Collection at NOMA – cultural tune-up

Blue Oak BBQ – no explanation needed.

[coffee interlude]

Drive home.

Consider This

From the Port St. Joe Star (the local weekly, if you're not familiar):
Hurricane Michael: Bikes program seeks boost

That first Christmas – in fact the entire winter – after a major disaster is always the worst.  This looks like a good way to brighten things up just a little bit.

ps: Send to Saturday, and by Wednesday there was a letter with (in order of importance) a thank-you note and a tax deduction letter in my P.O. box.  Good folks.

pps: Article on the results in the St. Joe Star. 

Perspective

From yesterday's xkcd:

First Mustang Coupe Headed to Auction

It'll likely go for something in the half-million range.  Article at Fox.  VIN = (buncha zeros)2

Not really my way to fly, but it does have its own cool factor.

Sticky Wicket: A New Podcast

Here's a new podcast four-part mini series, centering on several Louisiana politicians and the news media of their time, improbably named Sticky Wicket:

download page |  all about 

To date only the first episode, centering on Huey P. Long has been published, and so far it's really good.  Recommended listening for people of all political stripe.

Hat tip to The Darling Daughter for pointing this one out.

The Hobbit, re-read

Following up on last month's post about The Hobbit movie disaster, I took a little time this past week to re-read The Hobbit.  As always, it's a delight to go back through that book and enjoy it all over again.  If you've never read it, or especially if you've had the misfortune to have only seen the movies, you owe it to yourself to dig into this book.

Then, as with potato chips, one thing leads to another and now I've launched into a re-read of Lord of the Rings.  This one will take a bit longer.  Reading the intro chapters, it was interesting to see how Tolkien's retconning of certain small aspects of The Hobbit between editions were, by him, attributed to Bilbo's coming under The Ring's influence.  The most significant of these revolve around upgrading a simple turn-you-invisible prop in The Hobbit into The One Ring in LotR, and are discussed in some depth in The Road to Middle Earth.  Anyway, it was a nice twist by Tolkien to attribute the retconning of various editions of The Hobbit into being a malevolent effect upon Bilbo of The One Ring's reality distortion field.

It's a nice day here, so that's all for now.  Time to go out and have adventures of my own.

Film Review: Prospect

Did you like Firefly?  OK then, put this one on your schedule.  Three and 1/2 Stars out of Four.

Oh, you want more?  Here are three more items:

1. The film's official web site.  It includes a functional "find where it's playing near me" feature and an honest, representative trailer that you should go watch right now.
2. More review?  OK here: it's gritty, real gritty.  Makes Firefly seem clean and polished by comparison.
3. Here's a review by a reviewer who gets this kind of film.  She has lots more to say.  BTW, if you know the old short story The Cold Equations, don't take her comment there too literally.  There's an element of things sort of playing out that way, but not exactly.  Her comment comes off as a spoiler if you know your classic sci-fi, but it truly isn't.

Back to your regularly scheduled evening surfing.

Deer Season Cometh

And you know what that does for mountain biking.  For quick reference, here are the key dates:

Gun & Dog: Nov 17 – Dec 1

Gun, no dog: Dec 16 – 23

Gun & Dog: Dec 24 – Jan 16

There are other phases to the season (youth, primitive, etc.), but the Gun & Dog phases are the ones to consider.  Here's the full link at MDWFP if you have questions or need more information.  And really, you should confirm these dates for yourself anyway before you go off to the woods.

Noteworthy

Every Veteran's Day it is worth pausing to reflect, but this year's 100th anniversary of the end of World War I makes today particularly noteworthy.  Not a lot I can add here, but we shouldn't let the day pass without mention.

Coffeeneuring Stop #7: Bethel Bike Trails

The post about Stop #6 promised something creative this time out, and creative is what we got.  With all the small-town shops checked off, it was time to step out into the Coffee Shops Without Walls category.  On to the particulars:
1. where: Bethel Bike Trails, Desoto National Forest, just north of Biloxi MS
2. date: 11/10/2018
3. what: double helping of black Taster's Choice instant ("just payin' for my sins here on Earth")
4. ride details: a short excursion for coffee and lunch, tacked onto the end of a 24 mile MTB ride
5. mileage: 3.1 miles round-trip

After the Thursday and Friday rains, the first serious cold front of the year moved through leaving beautiful cool weather and wet but not quite soaked woods.  It was a great day to be out there in the flat pineys of Desoto NF.  After getting the main ride done, swapped Camelbak for the day pack, pre-loaded with coffee gear, lunch, backpacking stove, and – throwing in a twist – a shortwave radio.  Here, have some pics, we'll come back to the rest in a minute:

Hm, for some reason those pics didn't stack around too easily this time.  Ah well, you can see the main points anyway: a smokey day camp, trying to get wet twigs to burn; the little folding Ti stove and pot, slowly trying to boil water to re-hydrate lunch & coffee; lunch & coffee & shortwave radio (listening to WWL-AM New Orleans at the moment); stove ready to be folded up for storage.

I'd been wanting to try out some of this gear under real-world conditions for a while, and here was the chance.  As a twig-burner, the Vargo stove did fine but it would've been much better if I could've found some dry wood.  As it was, pine park and cones were about the best things available.  The Osprey Talon 22 day pack, stuffed with nearly 15 pounds of gear and water, did great on the trail.  I wasn't trying to go light this time out, rather I was trying to push the gear a little bit to see how it performed under load.  As for the SW radio, it did well too, pulling in all kinds of stuff including a numbers station, some Spanish rap music, something in French, WTWW playing oldies, and a ham radio talk show.  Also dialed over to one of the ham 20 meter band digital text watering holes and listened in on a Canadian talking with a guy in the U.S., using the iPhone as the decoding computer.  So that was pretty cool.

All in all, it was a good day on the trail, and a good day to have coffee and try out some gear in the field.  But in the end, I was tired after 27 miles of wet woodlands and hustled it home before mid-afternoon.  And that's a good, slightly offbeat way to wrap up this year's Coffeeneuring Challenge.  But there's no stopping this train now, I'm headed downtown on the CX bike in a bit for the after lunch cup.

The Ugly Truth on Information-Thin Books

As seen over at SMBC :

Be sure to follow the SMBC link to get the mouse-over text and the red button gag.

BTW, if you want to catch up on Foucault even faster than the Cliff notes version, you can just download a couple of hours' worth of podcast over at Philosophize This.

Oh Good

Coffee May Protect Against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
Man, I'd be the perfect image of health if only I didn't twitch so much.

You can read some of my other opinions on the (dark) matter right here.

Well that's pretty cool.

How a Florida Jeep Club Used Wranglers to Flip a Family's House Over After Hurricane Michael
Story at Jalopnik.

Heartwarming, dramatic, and a little bit dicey all at the same time.

Whoo, you see the time?  More later.

Halloween & Pirate Radio

Halloween and Pirate Shortwave, they just seem to go together like peanut butter and chocolate.  Listening to Wolverine radio on 6955 USB at the moment.  It's pretty steady, if not all that strong.  Also could receive X-FM 6975 AM, but it was so badly fading that listening wasn't pleasant.  Propagation is pretty poor tonight, no other shortwave pirates receivable at the moment.

As usual, there's an article over at The SWLing Post.

Anthropomorphic Coffee

This defies description, but it pretty darn cool nonetheless.  Here, just go over to the link:
https://www.boredpanda.com/illustration-characters-inspired-by-coffee-marija-tiurina/

It doesn't really fit in with any other categories, so I'm lumping it in with Coffeeneuring 2018.  Maybe it'll make some of the other coffeeneurs smile.

ps: If you're wondering what some of those coffee-things are, Wikipedia has a page for you.  To get all of them you may have to follow a few links.  It's a start.

Book Review: Always Another Dawn

I'd mentioned reading this book a few weeks ago, and even mentioned finishing it weekend before last, but have been too occupied with cleaning up after some small matter to write about it.  So here goes.

Published in 1960, AAD is the autobiography of WWII pilot and 50's test pilot Scott Crossfield, up through the first dawning rays of the Space Age.  As such, the most surprising parts of the book are about America's other space program, which culminated in the X-15 rocket plane.  The book ends with him wondering which direction the U.S. space efforts would take, towards the Mercury program and capsules, or remaining with the X-series wings-and-wheels approach.  Here in 2018 of course we know how things rolled out, but getting the insider's view circa 1960 is fascinating.

There are innumerable other small insights into how the X-series both succeeded and failed over the course of the 1950s.  The Air Force's X-1 of course was a raging success, along with the Navy's D-558 program.  But somehow the R&D momentum stalled out with the X-2 and X-3, leaving the U.S. aerospace industry starved for hard data in the Mach 2+ arena.  Crossfield was there in the thick of these goings-on, and when he got wind of the early design stages of what would become the X-15, he carefully positioned himself to be the main pilot-engineer on the team, in order to guide this ultimate airplane's development around those pitfalls.  All along the way, where Chuck Yeager's autobiography gives the seat-of-the-pants stick-and-rudder USAF man's viewpoint, we get the NACA engineer-who-flies viewpoint in Crossfield's book.  It's a great way of seeing the situation from two completely different sides.  It also spells out for the reader that these planes were emphatically not about daredevil pilots setting records, even though that gets all the press and is mostly what the public sees, but were about them being flying testbeds to sort out how to build the next generations of high-performance production aircraft.

Back to the autobiographical aspects.  While the X-15 story takes up the last 40% of the book, there are the requisite air-struck teenager learns to fly stories, WWII pilot stories, post-war lull stories, etc.  All of these tales are good.  For example, in his first solo flight, Crossfield shows exactly why he would later become a great test pilot by debugging a mysterious banging noise on the plane.  In a more grim note, we get a glimpse of the mindset that would ultimately lead to his 2006 death in – what else – an airplane crash.

By all means, read Yeager's autobiography.  By all means, read (or just watch) The Right Stuff.  But after all that, take a look at the other side of the coin and read Crossfield's Always Another Dawn.  It gives an entirely different view of the same era, and will give a reader fresh insights into this wildly creative time.

Coffeeneuring Stop #6: Apalachicola Chocolate Company

Another good opportunity for coffeeneuring while in the FL Panhandle for fun with chainsaws and other implements of recovery.
1. where: Apalachicola Chocolate Company, Apalachicola FL
2. date: 10/27/2018
3. what: another damn latte.  What's becoming of me?  My sister is a bad influence.  Will have to drink at least a gallon of straight black to make up for these whipped travesties.
4. ride details: Another break from hurricane clean-up.  Again, rode the '89 GT Karakoram, which I leave in Apalach at my sister's.  At least, until my place is finished.  Click pics to right to embiggen.  If you squint, you can just make out a shadow from the knot from a rough-healed collarbone.
4. mileage: 2.1 miles round-trip.  Just slightly closer to my sister's house.  Any closer and we'd have had to detour to a park on the way.  It's a very small town.

Another beautiful late October day, another coffee break from storm clean-up, and another easy ride with my sister.  Saw three cousins having lunch on the way back, so we stopped and talked with them for a half-hour or so.  Then it was back to the saw.

It's a funny thing, but this year the Coffeeneuring Challenge is going much more smoothly than last.  Even with Hurricane Michael complicating things, the schedule has worked out.  Also having an additional coffee house here in Bay St. Louis makes clicking off one more stop all that much easier.  No more local coffee houses, so the next – and final! – coffeeneuring stop will have to be a little more creative.  Stay tuned.

Coffeeneuring Stop #5: Cafe Con Leche

Over to Apalachicola for a weekend of chainsaw action, but we managed to take time out for some coffeeneuring.  On to the particulars:
1. where: Cafe Con Leche, Apalachicola FL
2. date: 10/26/2018
3. what: plain ol' latte, buncha foam on top
4. ride details: Beautiful fall day in the FL Panhandle.  Rode the '89 GT Karakoram; that bike's no stranger to hurricane season.  As always, click to embiggen the picture.
5. mileage: 2.2 miles round-trip.

As with last year's trip to CcL, rode with my sister this time.  You can see her 100% stylin' Schwinn in the background.  Apalachicola's looking a little rough after Hurricane Michael, but nothing like our neighbors to the west, Port St. Joe and Mexico beach.  Still lots of clean-up going on, and I was glad to have a break with some real coffee to speed along the chainsawing.

ps: If you click on the picture, you can see where the coffee shop's railing along with its supporting bricks have peeled away from the porch.  Just on the other side of the railing is Water Street, which was flooded about 4' deep during the recent hurricane.  Coffee shop and its neighbors stayed dry, while a friend's shrimp house across the street didn't.  Neither did the row of shops on the next block north.  Also, on the left in the distant background, you can see the Hwy 98 Apalachicola River bridge.

Coffeeneuring Stop #4: Cat Island Coffeehouse

The prettiest fall day we've had so far.  Here are the particulars:
1. where: Cat Island Coffeehouse, Pass Christian MS
2. date: 10/21/2018
3. what: double macchiato (real kind), with a chocolate-and-orange torte on the side
4. ride details: perfect high-60's fall weather for the ride; took backroads and the Bay bridge there & back; CX bike
5. miles: 16.6 round-trip

It's one of those stunning fall days here on the MS Gulf coast, one of those days that makes up even for hurricane season.  Here, have some pictures:

     

     

Clockwise, from top left: Henderson Point seen from Bay Bridge; Pass Christian Harbor, from coffeehouse porch; yes, and way too much carbs; and finally, CX bike waiting patiently by coffeehouse railing.  Click on any to embiggen, because these thumbnail pics don't do justice to the beautiful day we're having here.

And with that, we're off to a good start on this year's Coffeeneuring Challenge.  This also covers all of the actual coffee shops within about a 20 mile radius of BSL, so for the next few we're going to have to get creative.  Stay tuned.

Not my review: First Man

I haven't been able yet to make time to go see the new movie First Man, a biopic about Neil Armstrong, but I had been looking forward to it since hearing of it last summer.  Now some reviews are in, and in a nutshell they're saying that it's beautifully made, but that Armstrong is portrayed as an emotionally damaged robot.

Now mind you, these reviews aren't coming from the usual film school dropouts who write for the local city paper.  Sure, those people can critique something like La La Land just fine.  However, for a movie about the Apollo program and the engineer pilots behind it, more expertise is called for.  So go have a look at what Amy Teitel over at Vintage Space has to say about the movie.  I trust her a good deal more than the average film reviewer.

And no, it doesn't seem like editing history to drop the flag-planting scene was that big a deal, even to people nominally on the right.  Don't take my word on it, listen to what Bill Whittle has to say.  His complaints aren't about the flag, which he mentions only in passing.  His complaints are all about the portrayal of Armstrong.  Conversely, his praise is all about the re-creation of early space hardware, specifically the X-15 and Gemini scenes.

So bleh.  I'd really like to go see this movie, if only for the cool hardware on the big screen.  But I don't think it's worth my time to bother.  Maybe I'll go see it, if I get a free evening.  At least I've been warned ahead of time and can perhaps shrug off the bad writing long enough to enjoy the flight scenes.

Trailer for They Shall Not Grow Old

It's a documentary built around meticulous restoration of WW1 footage.  On the off chance you haven't yet seen the trailer, here it is.  Go watch now.

After watching that, here's a BBC video interview with director Peter Jackson.  He discusses the hows and whys of the process.  Also very much worth the few minutes' watch.

Can't wait until this gets here to the States.

ps: Official site: https://www.theyshallnotgrowold.film  Not much there for us in the U.S. at the moment, but perhaps we'll be seeing some "playing your side of the pond" announcements there soon.

Coffeeneuring Stop #3: Buttercup Cafe

Just a stop for coffee right at lunchtime – shoulda saved this one for a breakfast, but I'll be back.
1. where: The Buttercup on Second Street, Bay St. Louis Ms
2. date: 10/20/18
3. what: plain ol' black coffee, probably Community brand.  Free refills!  Chocolate chip cookie too.
4. ride details: a warm, sticky mid-October day; CX bike; more below
5. 5.5 miles round-trip.  It's next door to PJ's, but I took the beach route home.

Cold front's on the way through, so things were kind of muggy and in the mid-80's.  The Buttercup's nice, but it's more of a breakfast and lunch place, less of a coffee shop.  Like I said, should've saved this one for a breakfast time run.

Had to stop for a train coming through downtown on the way back.

Finally, it's the third coffeeneuring stop within a single block of downtown Bay St. Louis.  The milages are all about the same, but because I took the beach route home that added another mile.  They're approximate mileages though, because I'm having to pull them from google maps.  What, no cyclometer?  Well, this one:

It's that kind of a bike.

If you were disappointed by the recent Hobbit movies...

...then this youtube series is for you:
The Hobbit: A Long-Expected Autopsy
Battle of Five Studios
The Desolation of Warners
Each is just over a half-hour long, so set aside a little time to plow through.

Seldom has anything so well-begun gone so horribly wrong as those movies.

Curtains for the Many Worlds Interpretation?

Following up on last week's death knell for pilot wave theories, Quanta magazine takes on the many worlds interpretation.  The quantum Russian roulette thought experiment is a particularly compelling argument against MWI.

Crazy question: Wouldn't these diverging universes have some residual interaction with each other?  Gravitational, at the very least?  And if so, then why don't we see any signs of these interactions?  (Apart from than some possible hand-wavy allusions to dark matter and/or dark energy, I mean.  Show me some math about that and then we'll talk.  No, I didn't think so.)  It's this apparent lack of residual interactions that has always put me off of MWI and related ideas.

OK, on to more positive things, about which we can actually make non-nonsensical statements.   Maybe do some coffeeneuring this weekend.

I'll take it.

Yeah, more later.

Coffeeneuring Stop #2: PJ's in The Bay

Right on schedule, the madness continues.  Today's particulars:
1. where: PJ's Coffee, Bay St. Louis MS  (it's new, not a lot at the link but it is there)
2. date: 10/14/18
3. what: 16 oz medium dark roast "Grind 35" or some such.  Had a chocolate cake ball with it.
4. ride details: warm October day in the mid-80's.  Took the neighborhood backroads there, took the railroad gravel shortcut back. 
5. 4.5 miles round-trip.

CX bike can be seen leaning against stairway railing.

Other stuff... finished reading Always Another Dawn with my coffee.  Expect a post on that book soon.

Also... I know at least some the scoop on this PJ's.  I don't want any crap from friends about this trip.  Just taking a look-see while getting another easy coffeeneuring stop in.  The coffee and cake were fine though, the staff was friendly and efficient, the place looked really nice – new, clean, & well laid-out, and I even saw a few people I know while there.

Crusin' the Coast Video

Over at the Sea Coast Echo site: here.  Worth a couple minutes' look.

Coffeeneuring Stop #1: Mockingbird Cafe

As with last year, this madness had to start with the Mockingbird.  Here are the particulars:
1. where: Mockingbird Cafe, Bay St. Louis MS
2. date: 10/13/18
3. what: triple macchiato (the real kind)
4. ride details:  a nice September-ish day in mid-October; CX bike
5. 4.4 miles round-trip
 (if you're wondering what all this is about, here's the intro page)

CX bike can be seen behind stairway railing, at the right.  Click to embiggen.

Other thoughts... Took along the kindle and read another chapter in Always Another Dawn.  75% through, will post a few wrap-up comments here at the blog when done.

Curtains for Pilot Wave Ideas?

Yeah, pretty much.  Article Famous Experiment Dooms Alternative to Quantum Weirdness at Quanta Magazine.  Don't ask me to explain it here, just go read.  I still need to read it a couple more times.

Yeah, but is it art?

Banksy artwork shreds itself after #1m sale at Sotheby's

Personally and for once, I'm at a loss to comment.

Update: I have it on Good Authority that yes, this is legitimately art.

Update #2: You can see the actual shredding happening here.  Banksy shouldn't have cheaped out on the batteries, it looks like they gave out half-way through.

Update #3: Speculation on the internet has it that this incident, its results, and notoriety have instantly increased the value of the work by 2-5x.  We shall see.

Scott Crossfield, Remembered

By coincidence, last night I picked up a kindle copy of NACA/NASA test pilot Scott Crossfield's 1960 autobiography Always Another Dawn, and then this article about Crossfield popped up today on the This Day in Aviation site.  Interesting stuff so far, but I'm barely a chapter in.

BTW, Amazon seems to be putting a fair number of older books on kindle for cheap.  This one for example was just $0.99.  Oddly enough, it was nearly $4 for direct-to-kindle.  Pricing algorithms, go figure.

Time for a Review of the FTdx-1200

This is a shorty, a re-post of the review I wrote in July over at MTC Radio's site, where I'd bought a 1200 on an open-box deal back in late January.  There I gave it 4 out of 5 stars, and am sticking with that assessment.  It's very, very good, with a few things that could be a lot better.  OK, here we go.

Upgraded from an FT-450D and it's like night and day.  The triple conversion receiver and DSP filter out noise to where SSB rivals FM for local 80m rag-chews.  Turning to digital, all of the notch filter and bandwidth options make picking out weak DX signals easy, and eliminating the unwanted ones even easier.  Back to SSB, the speech processor gives a good extra punch that my sometimes thin voice can use.

Other things to note, this is a big, solid, heavy radio!  Inside, carefully laid out circuitry, with no compromises to reduce size or weight.  Looking at all the menus, everything is adjustable, 196 menu items worth of adjustable.  With some care you can dial things in exactly the way you want them.  The display screen is well designed too, with several useful optional layouts.  Finally, the memory features are very easy to use.  I can't stress enough how handy that is.

Now for the down sides.  The internal speaker sound muddy.  When SWLing in AM mode, the DSP is heavy-handed, even on its lightest setting.  A nice external speaker and a little contour treble boost cleared up those two problems.  The pre-programmed frequency offsets for digital modes are in the way if you want to tie into your shack computer and use FLDIGI, and the related menus are not easy to sort out.  Finally nailed it all down by using WWV's time signal as a reference.  One more ding, not enough back-lighting on the controls, and there are a number of small important black-on-black buttons.  Good shack lighting is a must with this radio.

Oh but now six months along and I've got my 1200 dialed in, and it's everything I'd hoped it would be.  Just work with it and it turns into a fine radio.  My old 450D was good, but this is a big step up.

ps, back here in September:  If you want a more technically complete review, there's a pdf copy the QST review from January 2014 at this link.  The most interesting part is the sidebar article there "Downconverting, Upconverting, What's the Big Deal?"  Scroll down a couple of pages, you'll find it, it's a full page.  Also, they have pictures there.