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Comments and rants on random subjects
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Mon, 30 Jun 2008
Low flying aircraft
Late this morning people in Sydney were treated to the sound and then sight of a largish four engine aircraft flying a somewhat unusual and fairly low flightpath on its way across the Northern Beaches on approach into Sydney. What made it a bit more interesting was:
- the thing was painted gray
- it had a fighter flying in close formation off its tail
Huh. Certainly a bit unusual to see on its way into SYD, but the fact that it was obviously a military aircraft, with a fighter escort, was more than reassuring. Mostly we figured it was a head of state or senior officer from some allied nation on the way in, getting a nice escort. I will admit that Katrina and I are both a little jumpy when it comes to very loud engines close overhead; the scream from the fighter’s jet engine mixed in did give it an unusual timbre. (Which most people aren’t used to; if you haven’t experienced fighters up close and personal, it’s not a roar but more a thin penetrating shriek. Hollywood never gets these things even remotely close). So, {shrug}. Residual jumpiness aside, what I learned from the last time a large jet flew down my street is that if you are hearing the engines firewalled, at least it is already past you.
Anyway, it all turns out to be quite innocent. The Royal Australian Air Force is retiring it’s last Boeing 707, and they did a photo shoot over Sydney. How nice.
Even though I only got a brief glance, I should have recognized the airframe. Bah. The US military still fly a number of C135 derivatives; that it might have been one did flash through my mind, but I they’re kinda getting on in years and I didn’t expect to see one hereabouts. A 707 isn’t that large, but sometimes scale is hard to tell from afar. Alas
I wouldn’t have ever given it a moment’s thought again except that a glance this evening at a local paper’s website showed it headlining an article about it, much to my surprise. Somewhat less of a surprise was them using the occasion to be all alarmist about low flying planes over cities.
After we get past the quotes of office workers who were terrified and who ran screaming from their buildings, we get to the mention that the plane was “trailing smoke”. That’s awesome. Uh, in case you didn’t know, that’s what turbofan engines do at low speed. Airplanes are made to be efficient at high altitude cruise. Pouring out power to keep a plane going at low speed is, unfortunately, somewhat inefficient. Kinda like your car starting after a red light. Jet engine manufacturers work hard on this sort of thing, but older planes are (surprise) less efficient. Which is why aircraft manufactured in the 1960s are somewhat less than ideal from an operations cost standpoint. Not to mention noise, and, yes, the black gunk pouring out the back.
The principal complaint is that people seem to feel they should have been told about this. While I’m sure the press will be full of scary headlines in the morning, and no doubt the politicians will hang the Air Force out to dry, the air navigation regulations for the Sydney terminal airspace clearly allow for aircraft doing photo op orbits over Sydney harbour and explicitly detail the procedures to be used. Gotta get that bridge and concert hall in or it just doesn’t count, right? So, quite sensibly, ATC around Sydney allows for pilots requesting permission to do so.
Now, admittedly, the average photo op by a circling Cessna doesn’t attract much attention; a largish jet is a bit more ostentatious. Neglecting for a moment that most of the approach paths bring low flying aircraft right over Sydney and its suburbs anyway, should the populace be given advanced notice of plans to orbit planes a bit lower? Hm.
Apparently at least one local radio station did know about this ahead of time, so I’d say the RAAF did its part¹ (and that’s assuming that it had an obligation to do so, which frankly, I’m not convinced of). If the journos didn’t think it newsworthy to mention in their broadcasts, that’s not the Air Force’s fault. And there in lies the problem. So long as the media is busy reporting on the latest antics of Britney Spears and how the 6 year long US presidential election campaign is getting on, I doubt there will ever be much time for public service announcements, even if we did decide that such things were topical.
AfC
¹ Update: Here’s the Department of Defence press release, released last week.
Fri, 14 Dec 2007
Darth Claus
The town I live in held a family evening of Christmas carols at the local cricket oval last night. At first it had promise of being more than the usual amateurish affair that seems to be the lot of small communities, with a large choir and a proper orchestra.
But as the second half opened, instead of playing carols, they played the theme to Star Wars. Star Wars?!? And then Santa Claus appeared. At first I was a bit annoyed at the lack of musical taste, but then a broader truth became apparent:
Santa Claus is a Sith Lord
Suddenly, everything that drives you nuts about the excesses of the Christmas season makes sense. The endless shopping, tacky decorations, and worst of all the fact that the stores start playing Christmas music in October — it’s all an evil plot. Not to mention the whole flying through the air and visiting several million people an hour thing. Only a master of the Dark Side could manage these feats. Darth Claus, Lord of the Sith.
Image from a blog post a few years ago by Nikolai Ormazablev writing a review (in Spanish) of Revenge of the Sith. How did he know?
:)
AfC
Sat, 01 Sep 2007
That pesky security
Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating commenting on Sydney residents who are complaining about the inconvenience some will suffer as a result of Australia hosting this year’s APEC summit:
Grow up. Count yourselves lucky. Here you have leaders representing 60 per cent of the world GDP, a massive power grouping, coming to your city to discuss world affairs, and we think it’s a bother?
What’s really smart is that they made Friday a stat holiday for everyone who works in the city in order to alleviate the bulk of the inconvenience that would have otherwise been caused to people dealing with disruption to their commutes that day. Sweet! What more could you ask for?
AfC
Mon, 02 Apr 2007
Tsunami Warning
There was a “tsunami warning” here this morning. This was initiated after an 8.1ish earthquake caused a tsunami wave to spank the Solomon Islands. Here in Sydney [which is a) a long way away, and b) around the corner from the Coral Sea and sheltered, by, well, Queensland], they closed the beaches, cancelled the ferry services, and sent large ships out to sea. My goodness. You’d think that the emergency services would have had sirens and alarms going to evacuate everyone up to high ground and safety.
Nope.
I was able to sleep right through the sirens and alarms. Because there weren’t any. Yup. Good job, there.
As it happens the disturbance that finally reached us here was 15 cm high. Get your surfboards, dudes, we’re gonna go catch some waves.
They cancelled the ferry for this?
It turns out that despite its ominous name, tsunami warning actually means “oh, there might possibly be something that you might need to know about sometime later today.” Of course, by the time anyone found that out, the media were in a feeding frenzy. Apparently, tsunami warnings get issued several times a week in various places whenever there is a rumble somewhere in the hemisphere. It is supposedly followed on the danger scale by tsunami alert and then tsunami alarm. (How anyone is expected to tell the difference between these three is beyond me. It’s right up there with the American terrorism threat levels: “Oh no! We’ve switched from orange to amber to sodium-yellow! The evil-doers are coming! Quick, Martha, get out the shotgun!”)
There are a number of places in the Pacific that do have tsunami alarms, like, as in, real alarm sirens. They practice it every month on (for example) Tuesday morning at 10:00. The point is, and everyone there gets this, that if the alarm goes off at anytime other than 1st Tuesday at 10:00, you need to be running like hell up the mountain.
Meanwhile, back in our little corner of the industrialized world, the only alarm we have here is the shark alarm. And indeed, when you hear that, it’s generally considered a good time to get out of the water. I can only hope that someone clues in that if you expect people to respond to an emergency alarm of slightly greater gravity, you need to tell people what it is first, and maybe even rehearse it once in a while so people recognize it. Otherwise, the never-cry-wolf factor will kick in and some day when there really is cause for alarm, it will be ignored — and that sorta defeats the purpose of having ocean warning systems.
AfC
Thu, 17 Nov 2005
AOL doesn’t get it
The commercial IM networks have long been relatively careful about preventing intrusions from people pestering or worse. AIM, ICQ and Yahoo have “so-in-so wants you to be their buddy, do you approve?” The next-generation open-standard network, Jabber, is even more explicit about granting permission to even let someone see your presence.
This morning when I fired up gaim, I discovered this:
AIM Bots ?!?
No request, certainly no approval. AOL just automatically added them into my buddy list.
You’d think the trashing that Sony is getting this week would have given people a hint. But there are obviously companies out there that still don’t get it when it comes to privacy — let alone the power of the consumer in the network age.
Right Click
->Remove Buddy. gone
So much for AOL spy bots. More to the point,
Customer
->Tell friends all over the world about above stupidity->All decide to switch to a different system. gone plural
Of course, these are the same media companies that want to install cell phone jammers in movie theatres so that kids can’t SMS their friends saying how lousy the film they just watched is. Here’s a hint: if you don’t make bad movies, then you won’t have to figure out how to force people to go to them.
AfC
Fri, 11 Nov 2005
Inspiration is everything
In an article about the new Southern African Large Telescope, BBC News points out that opposition politicians in .za have complained that the $10 million that the government invested in the facility could have been better spent.
I liked the rebuttal from South Africa’s Minister of Science:
“It helps to invest in science because those countries that have done so have been able to get out of poverty much more quickly. Of course we should help those people who are in poverty but in the long term it is better to train people and inspire them to look after themselves.”
There are no right answers in this world. Only choices. But without dreams and inspiration there’s not much for us. The article goes on to quote the enthusiasm from one local principal:
“The children at the school are going to visit the telescope next month and I expect that it will inspire them for a long time to come”, says Pelican Park head teacher, Logi Kismagani. “Even if the kids come back to classrooms without furniture the seed of knowledge will have been sown in them.”
Hear, hear.
AfC
Mon, 03 Oct 2005
An inane conversation about giant flying moose
Stewart: There is a giant wasp flying outside my window. Must be getting to that time of year.
Andrew: That’s exciting.
Andrew: I saw a giant flying moose once.
Stewart: Did it look distressed?
Stewart: If I was a giant moose and found myself flying through the air, I’d feel rather distressed.
Stewart: (at least I guess I would. I haven’t had that much experience as a moose)
Andrew: Well, if I see a self-help book with tips on becoming a moose, I’ll get it for you.
At least one of us must be really jet lagged. But according to this article there really are such things as flying moose. Yet another reason I can’t wait for a chance to be able to live in Norway.
AfC
Tue, 02 Aug 2005
Double decker nuclear powered laptop
Last night I was chatting with Stewart about what laptop we will be buying next. (He’s looking at ASUS laptops, one of which, the V6V looks really promising, and apparently has excellent Linux compatibility).
While we were on that site, however, I spied a “laptop” from a different manufacturer that makes me shake my head in amazement. It’s called the Sager NP9880 (why are computer model numbers so stupid?). It’s portable, but only in the “portable if you include the optional 4WD pickup truck option” category:
Laptops all look the same (ok, so this one is exceptionally ugly) but look closer: the keyboard includes a keypad! This thing has bays for two hard drives (you can get it RAID configured from the factory), and has slots for two optical drives:
Lots of ports…
… but note the thickness, and more worryingly, look at the size of that exhaust vent!
Now flip it upside down:
Oh my god! Look at the fans on this thing! It would probably hover at desk level all by itself!
I’d shudder to think what would happen to your legs if you actually ran this laptop on your lap…
Photos from website of “AGear Notebooks” a US based vendor.
Mon, 18 Jul 2005
Keeping the streets clean
The Toronto Linux Users Group has been undertaking a rather long winded discussion about incorporation - why they would want to, what the benefits would be, and whoops the people who actually do all the work in TLUG have already incorporated it so deal with it.
About a week into the discussion, Rob Sutherland posted this gem:
The other day I was walking down the street and encountered a group of homeless people screaming incomprehensible gibberish at each other as they attempted to resolve a dispute.
I’d say that based on this thread, the biggest benefit of TLUG to the community is that it gives the participants somewhere to carry on similar discussions that doesn’t involve blocking up the public sidewalk.
Ha. Reminds me of certain debates on Linux Australia’s linux-aus list…
AfC
Sun, 19 Jun 2005
Dysfunctional reply button syndrome
I’ve received three emails this week alone which started with “Sorry I took a while to get back to you…”
Some of us might recall a time when people eagerly awaited receiving an email, which would be written in careful length, and contain an insightful commentary. No longer. I’m not the first person to observe this, but it’s funny how the way people deal with email has changed over the last few years.
For most, email was their first exposure to an electronic store-and-forward message system. However, the fact that so many people in the corporate world spend (during working hours at least) most of their days planted in their chair in front of their computer means that many people have long since passed the point of being amazed by the fact that it all works, and instead now expect — and even demand — an instant response.
It’s made worse by people with BlackBerries. You send them a short email, perhaps only a paragraph or two, asking which of three different courses of action to take. They (immediately) respond with
sure
making it blindingly obvious that they didn’t read your email after all, which really makes you wonder why they bother carrying the things in the first place.
[I wore one of the pager sized ones for three years. I was thrilled to be rid of it. I carry my laptop all the time anyway - and a full size keyboard & screen beats the hell out of madly banging away with your thumbs while you squint your eyes trying to see what you’re writing]
Anyway, the ubiquity of people emailing correspondents who sit two desks away leads to such silliness as “did you get my email?” Of course they got the email, unless the corporate mail server is down, in which case the entire company grinds to a halt, there are screams of anguish, and the life expectancy of the IT Manager (or at least, the remaining duration of her status as a salaried employee) can be measured in minutes. What they really meant was “did you read my email, consider it carefully, and more to the point, why haven’t you replied yet, you lazy bastard?!?”
Frankly, I appreciate someone who takes the time to gather facts, marshal their argument, and send a well written, concise, but thorough message. Winston Churchill once said in the prescript to a correspondent
I’m sorry I haven’t had the time to write you a shorter letter
We could all use some of that.
Certainly, prompt replies are appreciated, but I think it’s wrong of us to expect them, even in our hyperkinetic age. Besides, if it’s that important, pick up the phone… or maybe walk two doors down and say hello to your neighbour. Meanwhile, for the rest who just want to make a reply, no need to apologize — it’s more than enough that you took the time to reply out of your hectic schedule, so thank you very much.
AfC
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