Nothing, but Maybe Something

Hm.  Will keep an eye on the weather this week.  At least, now that it's Monday, the rains have stopped.

WWL and Football Have Officially Jumped the Shark

Outside of Saints football season, WWL has at noon on Sundays in the past broadcast audio from one of the old school mainstream news-panel shows (Faze the Nation or Press the Meet, something like that).  So I tuned in, hoping for perhaps a different viewpoint, perhaps a few insights, or to maybe to pick up something I'd missed during this past chaotic week.

Not today.  Today... a Classic pre-game football commentary show from 2010.

I get it, people are hurting, wishing for some kind of return to normalcy, wanting their old seasonal routines, their old football back.  Still, WWL needs to rise above this.  Present something new, even if it is only speculation about the next football season.  Honestly, I think they can't, because they're having the same problems as a lot of people.

It's terrible to suffer from mental problems.  It's even worse when you broadcast them regionally at 50,000 watts.

Triple Feature: Greer's Retrotopia, Retro Future, and an Interview

This is essentially the same material in three different formats.  Retrotopia is a short didactic novel spelling out the ideas espoused in the non-fiction book Retro Future, and you can get a lot of it in a very condensed form in this linked podcast interview (careful; it's a little tricky to download, and it's a nearly 700 MB .wav file; that's 10x the size it would be in .mp3).

Back to the core ideas alluded to above.  In a nutshell, the claim is that current technology has largely reached or passed the point of diminishing returns.  Increasing complexity, decreasing functionality, and a general non-obvious interface user-unfriendliness have taken hold.

In the novel form, Retrotopia is set in the American midwest about fifty years into the future.  Due to a brief period of unpleasantries the U.S.A. is no longer a cohesive whole, and various regions have re-coalesced into smaller nations.  The protagonist is a trade envoy from the northeastern seaboard nation, which is desperately trying to hang onto a modern-seeming high-tech way of life.  He moves through the novel taking his time to poke around as he, and we, are shown How To Do It the Old-School Way.  Points are made, another catastrophe ensues (Kessler syndrome, a chain-reaction of satellite debris collisions), and while diplomatic visitors from other regions lose their comms and remaining marbles, the residents of the retrotopian Lakeland Republic simply shrug and go about their resilient business.

Alright, that's the plot and the plot devices.  On to the ideas, which are explicitly given in Retro Future.  There's a lot of pointing out what's currently going wrong throughout most of the book, but many of the positive parts are spelled out in the section Seven Sustainable Technologies.  Here they are, with a few comments on the ones I'm on good terms with:
1. Organic intensive gardening.  Incredible strides have been made in this over the past 50 years, to the point where it can be commercially viable (example), or at least worth the effort for a residential food gardener.
2. Solar thermal technologies.  Good thermodynamics here.  I've always though that it is silly to turn beautiful 60 Hz AC sine waves into hot water when free sunlight abounds.  The hitch is that this currently revolves around mostly non-$tandard cu$tom plumbing in$stall$, but that can change as it becomes more common.
3. Sustainable wood heating.  Same comments as #2.  What about air conditioning?  What about it, I grew up without it.  In Florida.  It's no big deal once you acclimate and get used to changing the bedsheets more often.
4. Sustainable health care.  Hrm, that's a big topic for another day.
5. Letterpress printing and its related technologies.  Another one from my youth.  Technologically sustainable, but oh is it hard work.  As a side note, fully a quarter of my undergraduate physics classmates were escapees from their parents' hot-metal print shops, and through grad school and ensuing career I keep running into fellow refugees.  We always share the same gruesome stories of Saturdays spent melting down used linotype slugs, late nights fixing broken machinery, etc.
6. Low-tech shortwave radio.  Yeah, it works well, and it doesn't need a constellation of comms sats.  Takes some education and skill though.
7. Computer-free mathematics.  Here's where Greer steps out of his depth.  Yes, there are lots of useful things that can be done with pencil and paper, and I have done many of them.  However, there are many more useful differential equations where closed-form solutions can be shown not to even exist and numerical methods provide the only solutions available.  Furthermore, for problems that require even relatively small data sets as input, it is frequently impossible to carry them out in a useful computation time by pencil and paper.  For example, weather data assimilation and forecasting fall into this class.

There's also a lot about energy-efficient transportation methods (canals, rail, sail, etc.), but this post is running long and you get the idea.

To sum it all up, both of these books were interesting reading.  Perhaps the fictional presentation or the just-the-facts-ma'am version is better suited to your liking, but either way it's much the same content.  Take a listen to the above-linked podcast in any case to decide if you want more.

It is funny though, the discussion on the local 2m repeater yesterday morning was all about the weird, unusable turns computer software has been taking over the last few decades.  This is exactly the sort of "side grade" Greer discusses in these three works, and it's clearly a problem in today's world.  It's good to see some possible solutions in print.

K+15

... and the world has mercifully moved on.  Pandemic, riots, an election that's being called rigged two months before the actual day, and Hurricane Laura this week are enough to rightly take the spotlight.  Here are this site's links; I'm moving on too.

Hoo Boy.

October just can't get here soon enough.

Mobile Radio Power: One Fuse or Two?

Bob K0NR makes his case at: https://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2020/03/one-fuse-or-two/

TLDR Version: If you blow the fuse on the negative/ground side, there still remains a current path through the coax ground shield braid and that would be a Bad Thing.  His solution is to only have a fuse on the positive/hot side and to install a substantial chassis ground on the radio.

I tend to agree.  Lots of nice diagrams at the article, lots of well-explained points to consider.

Of course all this is moot for a fully-floating ground plane antenna, but how often do we see those in mobile installs?

Surprisingly Close to the Truth

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/funding
Be sure to read the mouse-over text and to hit the big red button at the bottom for one more gag.

Hm, got a corner staked out already.

Two Special Event Stations of Note

15th Anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina & Rita, Aug 28 – Aug 30
and
Burning Man, Aug 27 – Sep 7

Sort of interesting, both.  You can find full details at the ARRL's page.  (it's dynamic content, will change within weeks; also, you'll have to scroll down some)  Weirdly, I'd really like to get that Burning Man contact in.

Google/Blogger Relents, Decides to Use Functioning Interface

Well that's some good news this week.  I'll probably stay around here now.  Oh man, is the original interface functional and simple to use.  Got the useable stats page and everything back.  Nice!

If you're wondering what all this is about, Google/Blogger has been struggling with a new posting interface/editor all summer.  It didn't go well.  Here're my earlier thoughts on the matter.

3 Hurricane Sites I Trust

This is sort of a re-hash, but I was asked about it today, so here goes:

The best first, the National Hurricane Center:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov

This site has raw model results buried down in there:
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/?index_region=at

This site has a meteorology grad student explaining what's going on:
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com
He usually posts once per day, in the evening.  Things are frequently out of date by the next day.

All the rest is media-screaming, designed to induce watching thru the next commercial break.

It's gonna be a bumpy week.

2020 So Far

Maybe have something constructive to say over the weekend.

Silca Pump Rebuild: 32 Years and Going Strong

Strangely, there's not a lot to say here beyond the post title.  Parts are available directly from Silca.  If you don't have one of their basic floor pumps, they'll be happy to sell you one for $99.  As I've pointed out before, this is not a cheap price but then this is not a cheap pump either: 32 years, two rebuilds, and still as good a new, albeit with a nice patina and a lot of fond memories.  But first, a picture:

So what parts did this overhaul require?  The leather plunger washer was the main one, just because it's the heart of the pump.  (Don't forget to buy the required leather oil that Silca also conveniently sells.)  The rubbery washer in the presta chuck; those just wear with every use, and it stacks up over 17 years.  Finally, the gauge.  The old one from circa 1988 was plastic-bodied.  It could flex when smacked on the side, which lead to the clear cover popping off sometime back during the first Bush administration, and eventually to the demise of the internal parts.  It held air nonetheless, but it did necessitate a separate hand gauge (something you should have anyway; strangely, Silca doesn't sell these).  The new one is metal, and there's a fair chance it'll outlast me.  Accurate too.  BTW, they sell a complete overhaul kit or the required bits individually.  I opted for the al la carte route, since the air hose was still good from the last rebuild.

It's noteworthy that everything, and I mean everything, went together smoothly and all seals were air-tight on the first try.  How often does something like that happen on a hard-used third-of-a-century-old piece of gear?  You can get a cheaper – in more than one sense – bike pump down at the big-box store, but this is the real deal, the one you want.

Plug "silca" into the search bar for some of my other impressions of their pumps and customer service.

ps: I still can't get the right font in this crappy new blogger interface.  Will continue with what we've got here for the moment, mostly out of inertia.

Yeah, Google/Blogger's Crapped the Bed

OK, I'm out for a while.  Will drop back by in a few weeks, and if this thing's still half-ass working, it's off to another blogging platform.

Update 8/8: 

Had a few minutes to play with the new interface.  It's... not good, marginally functional.  Change fonts?  Randomly it seems.  Certainly couldn't get it stick in a test post.  FWIW, I'm using Firefox on an old Mac at the moment.

 

Q: How do you know when a software company has run out of ideas?

A: When it stops improving products and starts producing pointless interface changes.

Here's some related content for your weekend contemplations: How Software Companies Die, by Orson Scott "Ender's Game" Card.

An Interesting Possible Path to Fusion

I'll just post the links to an IEEE article, along with two article links to Phys Rev C, and say that this looks promising.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fusiontokamak-not-included
https://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.101.044610

https://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.101.044609

While this method does employ lattice confinement and electron screening techniques to nudge nuclei closer to one another before giving a final kick of energy via electron beam, this is emphatically not cold fusion.  Also, publishing in Phys Rev C first before going public gives it an air of general respectability.

ps, Saturday 8/8: Edited this post for clean-up.  It looks like Google/Blogger has backed off of some of their plans for a Brave New Interface, at least to the point where things are useable again.

Interesting Junk Mail Today

Just a nice full-color card in today's junk mail, from an unusual source: a plasma center in the next major town west of here.  It looks like a saturate-the-area mass mailing, with splashy graphics and a can't-miss offer: bring this card in to their newly opened office and get $100 on your first visit.

This is about double the usual amount (according to Business Insider anyway), and only for the first visit, so what gives?  Looking at the company's web site: COVID-19 convalescent plasma.  There we go.

Now that junk mail makes sense.  Blood plasma's got to come from somewhere, so they might as well put a collection center near a hot spot, then pay double-rate for the first visit to draw more people in for screening.  And face it, many people who are recovering from COVID could probably use a few extra bucks right now.  Win all around.

It's an interesting advertising campaign.  Strange times we're living in.

Dragon on the Way Back

Splashdown (how long since we've used that term – 45 years!) slated for just after 2:45 EDT in the Gulf of Mexico.

There seems to be some confusion in the press as to where in the Gulf the capsule will splash down. According to NPR it's off Panama City, but according to the BBC it's off Pensacola.  Draw your own conclusions.

ps, somewhat later in the day:  Nailed it!  Would it be too NASA retro-futuristic to say that this splashdown went A-OK?  Because, as you can see, it did.

Yes, this is what the future looks like, and it is good.