Blustery crosswinds...

Blustery crosswinds...  A plane landing in strong crosswinds at Madeira's airport.  This looks worse that it actually is – we just aren't used to seeing such violent maneuvering near the ground.  When you have blustery crosswinds there's often no other way to get the aircraft safely on the ground.  Note how high the plane is until just moments before landing – that height means potential energy available for maneuvering, which this pilot made good use of.  Via Idaho mogul-of-everything, friend, former colleague, and reader Doug S...

Yet another...

Yet another ... good source of information about Git...

Holy crap!

Holy crap!  This made me wonder about where one might acquire a miniature turbine jet engine like that?  And what would it cost?  Turns out they're made in Grants Pass, Oregon (not that far from where I live!), and they cost between $2,000 and $5,500.  You can buy them over the Internet.  The biggest one delivers 52 pounds of thrust with a 5 pound engine weight, while drinking 1.5 pounds per minute of fuel (full throttle).

A serious RC enthusiast could afford to buy an actual turbine jet engine, delivering crazy levels of performance, as you can see in that video.  Some nutcase with technical ability (or access to it) could make a formidable drone with one of these. 

We live in amazing times...

Open source stenography!

Open source stenography!  Way back in the distant past, in 1981 (before most of my readers were born), I worked for a funny little company named Xscribe.  It was a great job for me, my first real job in a technology company, and it was a terrific learning experience on many levels – learning both how things should be done, and how they should not be done :)

The company's products were automation tools for court stenographers, and at the time they were revolutionary.  Most stenographers still worked with old-fashioned mechanical machines and did their editing and typing of transcripts by hand, on a typewriter or primitive dedicated word processor.  With Xscribe's products, their familiar stenographic machine was connected directly to a computer, they could create codes on the fly (an enormous time-saver), they edited on a CRT, and the printed the final transcript directly to a computer printer – near-magical levels of automation by the day's standards.

Xscribe made the classic mistake of insisting on closed, proprietary, and grossly non-standard hardware.  They were killed off by the advent of PC-based competition.  I lost track of the industry after that.  But this morning I came across the video above, by one of the founders of a free, open source stenographic software package called Plover – and references to open source stenographic input hardware as well.  The stenographers were tired of being plundered by overpriced vendors, and they're fighting back.  I've no idea what their success will be, but I'm fascinated that open source solutions are attacking niche markets like this.  It makes sense, though, because the market is too small for large economies of scale, too small to attract lots of competitors (which would drive the prices down), yet big enough that a collaborative effort might just work.  I suspect there are quite a few markets like that...

Oh, Canada...

Oh, Canada...  Rex Murphy is someone I watch or read at every opportunity.  Here he comments on the recent shootings in Ottawa...

Wisconsin's shame...

Wisconsin's shame...  George Will on the scandal of Wisconsin's weird “John Doe” process being used against Scott Walker.  It's the best thing I've read on the subject...

A source of satisfaction...

A source of satisfaction...  A good part of yesterday I spent replacing two old ceiling fans in our house.  The house contained four ceiling fans all together, all different.  Like many things in the house when we bought it, we suspect the former owner (who owns a residential construction company) took leftovers from various jobs for his home.  There's nothing wrong, really, with the four fans all being different – but not one of them was of a style that we liked.  So we determined to replace them, and decided to get four identical ones in a style we liked.

So where's the satisfaction in that?  It's this: we have the great good fortune to possess the financial wherewithal, in our retirement, to be able get the best quality ceiling fan we can find.  I did the research, and found a make and model that had great reviews online, was documented as being made with top-notch materials and parts, and matched our taste in its style.  The price was roughly double what the old fans likely cost.

The quality difference was driven home to me as I disassembled the old ceiling fans – perfectly serviceable, but visibly not as well made, presumably not as durable, and observably noisier and less stable (they vibrated and had some motor whine, especially at high fan speeds).  The new ceiling fans are made of heavier materials, have rubber noise and vibration dampening throughout, and were perfectly balanced without any adjustment at all.  The fit and finish are perfect.  Even at the highest speed setting, there's no vibration and no motor noise with the new fans – just the quiet rush of the air being moved.

It's such a little thing, really ... but I have lived most of my life in financial circumstances that did not allow me to make such choices.  Virtually every purchase we ever made was compromised by the price we could afford to pay, and usually it was quality that was compromised.  It's very satisfying to me that now we need not make any such compromise for most of the ordinary things we need, because we can afford to buy the quality we really want.  There's another factor at work here, too: the more experience one has, the more one appreciates fine quality...