Another sunny day with a cool breeze off the lake…. like yesterday. It got plenty hot in the sun but was nice in the shade all day. Looking forward to another day like that.
Did a bunch of stuff, see last night’s comment for details.
Got a bunch of stuff to do today too. Maybe even more stuff in or on the water, or maybe a drink with the neighbors. Wife should be doing remodeling stuff in one of the bedrooms and I’ve got inside stuff to do, plumbing stuff.
Back is squawking at me. Too much bending and lifting yesterday. Getting all worn out sucks.
Hope the world holds together, I’ve got more to do up here.
Y’all have a nice day today.
n
Oh, stack some stuff while you can.
Looks like I got the time for the robo-post wrong. I’d swear I double checked it….
A bit windier than yesterday with a little overcast. I might not get the sunny day I was hoping for.
IDK what marine gas is going for, there is always a premium at the marina anyway. I know that regular gas for the truck has me considering trips and not doing stuff because of the gas cost.
Heck, I passed on potato chips in the store at $3.89 a bag, when they used to be $2.50. Time to start practicing for tougher times, and I need gas more than chips (usually).
n
People are falling for the FX version of this humanoid robot soldier:
Combat Robots: VFX Before & After RevealVery realistic and reminiscent of Boston Dynamics robots.
@Lynn – I put an f2c repository out at github.com/gsnorton/f2c. Any experiments I conduct will get pushed out there. Right now, the source is clean with only minor tweaks to eliminate a file generated during make and a change in permissions to another.
I had to laugh yesterday while watching “Top Gun”. The terrain model in the attack simulation software may well be generated by my code, a leftover from my grad school work in Vantucky nine years ago.
I never put my software for that project online, but the professor handed my core rendering algortihm to another student so that person could complete his related project and not fail the class. Campus politics. The other student later posted it to Github claiming full credit without acknowledgement.
The graphics sure looked familiar. I lived that rendering software for three weeks.
A lot of the humanoid robot soldier projections I’ve seen lately are eerily reminiscent of the prototype Terminator robot animatronics at the Cyberdyne “demonstration” area which was the core of the “T2 3D” attraction at Universal Studios parks.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen DoD contractor life imitate art. About 10 years ago, at a career day on campus in Vantucky, Boeing had a demonstration video for the 747-mounted airborne laser which was almost a duplicate of the footage of the test in “Real Genius”.
BTW, if you are a “Real Genius” fan, Val Kilmer’s scene in “Top Gun” will make you feel old.
No spoiler. The scene has been well publicized.
BTDT, close enough. It’s annoying. I’m not even looking for cash and prizes, but an acknowledgement that I wrote the core of the code or the first version of the report would seem to be a no-cost, obvious move. But of course, those who accept credit for others’ work are probably aware deep-down that they’re fakers.
I binged out the first volume of Stranger Things 4. Really good, but the constant imprisonment, torture and murder scenes of children will turn off a lot of people. The Duffer Bros. must hate chillins’.
That being said, if you a re a fan of ST, you’ll like it. Mathew Modine is his usual creepy self. “Papa, Papa”. Sounds like plugs: “Beau, Beau.”
Added: Netflix even put a disclaimer out front of “disturbing scenes” due to Uvalde.
The plagiarism happened with full knowledge and blessing of the faculty member.
Ironically, the other student is a big deal at a security software company these days, but he never received his Masters from the university.
A lot of people in tech are fakers. We seem to have a higher percentage here as of late.
From the service who brought you “Cuties”.
Could be worse. “Naomi” on the WB recently dropped the line “10 is the new 16”, and there isn’t any denying the context of the scene. I’ve seen it. Multiple corporations handed the show’s creator, one-time Oprah special project Ava DuVernay, her walking papers within a week.
“Woke” is increasingly history in mass media, but a lot of stuff is still in the pipeline.
@greg
dropped the line “10 is the new 16”, and there isn’t any denying the context of the scene
Not aided by girls entering puberty at younger and younger ages. I know several 4th and 5th graders already menstruating with breast development. My generation 7th / 8th grade was the usual onset of puberty. better nutrition? Low fat milk? Soy protein? BPA? I haven’t read any conclusive studies, and correlation is not causation.
Woke up first. Walked over to coffee shop and brought back a sludge cup and blueberry tea. some tasty carbohydrates. Teasing family awake instead of hassling them into consciousness.
Dr. Dean Edell occasionally debated lavender and tea tree oil with callers based on preliminary studies out of Europe. He advised not letting either one into the environment around per-pubescent boys until more properly controlled studies were done.
I always gave the self-proclaimed “hippie doctor” the benefit of the doubt. Arguably, taking on Airborne cost him his show prematurely, but he never backed down.
MeTV has a marathon running for “The A-Team” this afternoon, ahead of launching the series on Weekdays at 6PM/5 CT.
So why is that show no longer radioactive? Eight years ago, the BBC had to do the 30th anniversary documentary because NBC/Universal didn’t want to touch it.
Well, plenty of sunshine! And insolation heating my brain.
Working outside and in the garage, two steps forward, one step back.
Trying to stay on top of hydration issues today.
Met another neighbor. They are running decidedly right of center, and mostly very right of center. I think this is as good a compromise BOL as I’m likely to get.
Back to the grind… if I had a wind generator, I’d be making tons of power today.
n
Looks like someone did what the gun grabbers insist never happens…
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/law-abiding-west-virginia-woman-concealed-firearm-stops-mass-shooting
“if it saves even one life…”
n
If you don’t vote for hating children,
you ain’t blackyou ain’t a parent.A lot of fakers. Even more bozos who don’t realize that they aren’t very good.
No, Nick, just no! That phrase, like “out of an abundance of caution” and invocations of the precautionary principle, are to be used only if it furthers government power or reduces personal freedoms.
“If it saves even one life” was used to justify the mask kabuki.
Presumably the risky part is in going down a steep grade. Can you arrange the route so that you’re going up on the steepest parts and down on a gentler grade? That’s what I do on this property. If that’s not practical, see about going diagonally on the steep parts.
Going up hill is the most fun when you are towing a mower on the PTO (power take off) from your tractor. Too much power going up hill and you pop a wheelie. Been there, done that. And that was my dad’s 35 hp four cylinder diesel tractor with a 3 x 5 speed manual transmission.
@Lynn – I put up a github repository for f2c at
https://github.com/gsnorton/f2c
Any changes I make will go in there.
I am not an expert at Git, but I am at the point where I’ve used it enough on jobs to be able to fix any horrors I might inflict on a repository.
My plans for f2c are:
// 05/28/2022 Lynn McGuire updated and added new features (-u ?)
// 1. changed /* */ to // comments in the generated c code
// 2. removed trailing f from floating point constants
// 3. changed the fortran write’s to fprintf’s
// 4. changed arrays passed to a subroutine from &array[1] to &array[0]
// 5. removed the parameter adjustments
// 6. moved the f2c function declarations to an include file
// 7. stopped expanding the include files
// 8. fixed integer*8 to be able to be set to parametered values
I’ve got f2c built and running in Visual Studio 2015.
>> I’ll take some products to try and see if I can make the roof less leaky next time.
@Jenny, how about this?
https://flexsealproducts.com/products/flex-seal
I will vouch for flex seal. I used it to patch a leak on the underside of my roof, Held fine for 6 months until I had it repaired properly. It’s messy, but it works.
@Jenny and @Alan
– or use any of the “Gorilla” products…which have the same properties as the FlexSeal product, but not as expensive.
The Gorilla product line for this includes sprays and brush-on liquids and flexible tape. Example here – with a video on how to use, and similar products listed. I’ve had good luck with their various glue products.
I listened to Dr. Dean Edell often when I lived in California. Liked him.
Flex seal / Gorilla – yes! Precisely what I was thinking. Good to have the feedback confirming it should be the right product.
Water. Always. Wins.
Looks like someone did what the gun grabbers insist never happens…
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/law-abiding-west-virginia-woman-concealed-firearm-stops-mass-shooting
“if it saves even one life…”
n
How about if it saves at least one life per day…
“WWW: Watch (The WWW Trilogy)” by Robert J. Sawyer
https://www.amazon.com/WWW-Trilogy-Robert-J-Sawyer/dp/044102016X?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number two of a three book science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Ace in 2010. I have purchased the third book in the series and am reading it now.
Caitlyn Decter is 16 years old, a math prodigy, and blind. Not because her eyes are defective but because her retinas and brain do not communicate properly with each other. The condition is rare but a Japanese researcher has created a solution and it worked for her. The result allows her to see out of one eye and to meet an entity on the internet named Webmind whom she proceeds to teach how to be human.
Webmind is an emergent artificial intelligence. The position of the USA government is that emergent AIs are dangerous and must be destroyed. You know, like Skynet (Terminator) or The Matrix. So, the USA government has decided to destroy Webmind via Presidential executive order.
This is not the first time that an author has proposed an artificial intelligence on a common platform. Orson Scott Card created the Ansible Network, an instantaneous cross star system communications network, in his Ender books that has an AI named Jane in it. BTW, I do not include HAL 9000 in this list since he was just a computer running a program. But I would include Data from The Next Generation and Mike from “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”.
The author has a long running website at:
https://www.sfwriter.com/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 (123 reviews)
So… in 1983 the Military Airlift Command identified a severe Command & Control issue, and initiated a hurry-up software program to fix it. They gave it to JPL to develop (national labs can do no-bid contract development for critical projects), and within a couple years of starting, they had fielded a system that almost sorta-kinda worked by 1987.
Part of this effort was the construction of a command center with a tall-ceilinged room and one wall dedicated to a projection display system, with the intent of projecting briefing data and situation maps. That part worked pretty well, though the projection tech of the 1980’s was expensive and fragile.
Somewhere along the line, the commanding general saw the movie “War Games”, and said “I want that live display tech”, to display up-to-the minute in-flight location data of his aircraft, plus other strategic information. JPL hired the technical director from “War Games” to produce it. She and her team never quite got it working, but they could tease some impressive short demos from live data before it crashed.
But national labs are not allowed to do maintenance, so in 1987 the follow-on maintenance contract was let for bid, and Digital Equipment Corp. pounced on it. Eventually, the major bugs in the whole system were chased down and the graphics component was functional.
But a significant chunk of my career was based on fictional tech from a movie. Ironically, I have never seen that movie, but I have seen stills and clips of the displays.
The core of that Command & Control system still lives, and the latest 5 year maintenance and modernization contract was let in 2020. I had a friend retire last month after working on that system from 1987, continuously.
I’ll also vouch for Flex Seal, but I’ll second that it is messy. Clean up requires mineral spirits.
I used Flex Seal to patch the hole in my kids’ shower wall when the soap dish fell off early in the pandemic and having a pro out to recaulk the shower and replace the dish was a three month wait.
My caulking skills suck.
I worked on a diagnostic port for Milstar as an intern in 1989. I had no clue what the system was about until I saw a long article in Rolling Stone a few years later.
Oh. It does that. Makes sense.
Somewhere along the line, the commanding general saw the movie “War Games”, and said “I want that live display tech”, to display up-to-the minute in-flight location data of his aircraft, plus other strategic information. JPL hired the technical director from “War Games” to produce it. She and her team never quite got it working, but they could tease some impressive short demos from live data before it crashed.
But national labs are not allowed to do maintenance, so in 1987 the follow-on maintenance contract was let for bid, and Digital Equipment Corp. pounced on it. Eventually, the major bugs in the whole system were chased down and the graphics component was functional.
Did DEC build the WOPR too ?
The graphical 30 foot wide display with the radar tracks of the ICBMs and planes coming into the USA was freaking cool. I don’t doubt that the Air Force built one just like it. Visualization is a key component of War.
Fortunately, no. MAC (later AMC and USTRANSCOM) is only responsible for strategic airlift and logistics. It was often described as the largest cargo airline in the world, with the ability to put cargo into any identified airfield and several less-developed landing zones. Oh, and drop it by parachute if necessary. So it didn’t control, deploy, or operate weapons systems. It only delivered them…
WOPR wouldn’t have a chance against the stovepipes between competing contractors and .mil organizational rivalries. It would commit suicide rather than try to coordinate data exchanges between the various beltway bandits. One of the unsolved problems I tried, hard, to solve was to get the specific cargo data for an aircraft from the parallel system that managed cargo. Our system managed aircraft, missions, and personnel. So we knew who was flying, what aircraft, what sub-organization (wing, squadron) what schedule, and whether they were on time. The other system knew what cargo was going, where it was going, roughly when it was going, and maybe which mission. The owning contractor put up every roadblock they could to keep us from getting access to the cargo data.
I wanted the ability to mouse over an icon for a plane, right-click and get a popup showing all the poop, including what was being carried. Never happened. We could show who was flying and a bunch of other info, including deviation from schedule.
This often led to people greeting landing aircraft expecting certain items, and discovering they were coming later, on a different plane. I may have failed to mention that the parallel cargo system was riddled with ambiguous data and delays.
It was not a tech problem. It was institutional inter-contractor issues, and we begged the general to put an end to it. He didn’t.
Oh, and I realize your question was in jest. But I’m the guy who answers rhetorical questions all the time. It’s a blind spot, and one of my remaining engineer’s disease traits.
>> Water. Always. Wins.
One of the reasons we like it here in the desert. And the 14% RH.
>> My caulking skills suck.
Mine too. I’ve learned to not cut the tip too large, push the caulk gun instead of pulling it and use an air-powered gun. Then I usually can get something passable.
“But of course, those who accept credit for others’ work are probably aware deep-down that they’re fakers.”
Do not underestimate the sense of entitlement that can reside in those of lesser talent.
Hey, who do you think you’re talking to? I’m the guy who came up with “’Cynicism’ is just another word for ‘experience’.”
OK, groomer.
“Avoid grapefruit during treatment”
Well, some of the local high school kids are celebrating their graduation next door. Nice to know kids are still interested in trucks, beer, and girls. They’re at the “tops are coming off soon, and then it will get quiet” stage…
Started with rap music, but ending with some deep old country.
Beautiful night, black sky, lots of stars, nice breeze.
And kids having fun.
n