Blackberry REACT August 2010 NewsletterQuick ClicksTrain extravaganzaThis starts out with the high speed bullet trains that are already in operation or that have been designed and built, but not yet on the tracks. Then the story tracks back to the past when steam trains were streamlined. Modern bullet trains are designed in wind tunnels and are sleek, but those Twenties and Thirties steam locomotives were designed in the visions of men (no women – sorry) and were glamorous and impractical in modern theories of streamlining. Some of the illustrations compare the Packard Lebarons and Duesenbergs. Incredible, creative designs. Steampunk Mr. PotatoheadI occasionally post steampunk photos because of the craft involved (well, they’re often gorgeous, too), and here’s a Mr. Potatohead done in brass (I think) in classic steampunk fashion. Of course, things can be taken too far. Metal VelcroMetal velcro is unimpressed by heat and chemicals. Our velcro often melts at Burning Man, leaving a goo on our gear which then blows away in the winds because it’s no longer held by that sticky stuff. Metal velcro is heavy duty. Grand Central Station’s secretsOur friend Dan has an article on Grand Central Station and things we don’t know about it – a $20 million opal, a special president’s access platform, and more. (All the clocks are a minute off.) Nothing to hideI occasionally rant about the Red Cross or some other entity wanting to do a background check and make sure I’m fit to volunteer – and the check includes credit, among other things. The usual answer to my complaint that I don’t want it run is that I’ve got nothing to hide. Well, here we go again: the Department of Defense awarded a contract to a private contractor to supply mobile technology services that link special operations troops around the world. In a secret heist, seven people loaded thousands of hardened laptop computers onto two semi tractor-trailer rigs over the course of nine hours at the contractor’s offices. That’s right, two big rigs; nine hours; seven people. And no one at the contractor noticed the theft at the time. The theft was kept secret for security reasons, but local reporters discovered it when the theft was mentioned in a court document, and their own search found some warrants issued by the local sheriff. DOD spokes persons said there was no breach of military security, but there’s no way for us mere civilians to know what was on the computers. I’m back to the issue that my data is not safe when I don’t control access to it. Red Cross doesn’t do the background checks, of course – the contract it out to a third party – so even if I trusted the Red Cross to keep my data safe (and I don’t), I don’t know if I could trust whatever contractor gets the award this year. I note that the “court document” is in a lawsuit between the owners of the contractor suing each other for conspiring to defraud each other out of ownership. Trust this company? No, thank you. I don’t want my background data and credit history on their computers. The LeathermanPatent photos of the original Leatherman multi-tool. The prototype was created using cardboard, then he went to meal. It looks almost steampunk in its early stages. (You may want to click on "skip the ad.") FCC changes, pending and proposedThe August 2010 issue of CQ Magazine has a lengthy summary of the speech at the Dayton Hamvention® by William Cross, an official in the FCC. Among many other things, Mr. Cross mentioned the National Broadband Plan, which is a look at reallocating frequencies to the mobile broadband users over the next ten years. The government is looking for large blocks of radio frequencies that can be auctioned off to commercial users. Nowadays 90% of all TV is not received over the air, so the FCC is looking a reallocating TV channels. Of amateur frequencies, those below 225MHz (1.25 meters) are of little interest because the blocks are too narrow. Mr. Cross said he expected better use could be made of 70 cm by the land mobile community than by hams, especially since we share it with government radars. The Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act is still languishing in committees. If passed in its present form it will require a study to identify impediments to amateur radio communicators, including antenna restrictions. Somehow the bill got through the Senate, so now the House has to act. Life insurance for astronauts.When I was in the Air Force, I remember talking to a former test
pilot who joked about making an insurance salesman sick. Members of
the military often live in base housing, and if salesmen can get on
base, they have a very select audience. One life insurance salesman
talked to the guy, not knowing what he did. The salesman promised life
insurance at incredibly low rates (military personnel are very safe
because the live on base and have safety drilled into them). The
pilot said, “So you can guarantee me this amount of insurance for this
price?” The salesman nodded smugly till the guy said, “That’s great
because I’m a prototype test pilot, and I can’t get insurance anywhere!”
The salesman nearly threw up, my acquaintance said, because prototype
test pilots flew planes that were It never occurred to me that astronauts were in the same boat, but here’s the article about the Apollo astronauts signing “covers” just before every launch (covers are special envelopes with matching stamps) with the expectation that if they crashed and burned, the covers would be worth enough to provide some income for the surviving families. Photos of the covers and the full story at the link. Color photos of the US from 1939-43Reproductions from color slides of people and businesses in the depths of the depression. I didn’t know there were starch factories. The careworn faces and gaunt bodies show how bad things were, but there still was fun to be had – dances, carnivals, BBQs, and juke joints. Amazon warehouse mysteryYears ago (or months ago, who can tell?) I posted a link to a UPS (or was it FedEX) online want ad video showing what it’s like to work there in Kansas. Here’s a 3-minute video from the Amazon warehouse, showing a box that is perfectly out of sync with the conveyor belt. Whatever is inside is rolling in the box, keeping it flipping so that it rolls opposite the direction the belt is traveling at exactly the same speed. So that’s interesting for several seconds. But some avid Amazon employee filmed it for three minutes. That’s even more interesting than the rolling box. Is life there that leisurely? Or is that box that interesting? Or are employees so fascinated with their work that they’ll spend three minutes recording unusual behavior to document it for future employees and historians? Or was there a pool on how long it would roll? Light-reflecting turn signalYou forget things like this as time goes by. I grew up in a small farm town in Texas, and many people in the Fifties had cars that didn’t have turn signals. You stuck your hand out the window and gave the appropriate gesture to alert traffic behind you that you were going to turn. In the dark, your hand might not be visible to cars some distance behind you, so here’s an invention to get your hand turn signal seen. AT&T’s National Disaster Recovery effortAT&T has a national disaster recovery plan, and one warehouse of equipment is based in Georgia. When the World Trade Center collapsed, when Katrina hit New Orleans, AT&T’s semi-trailers left their warehouse and rolled to the disaster site to set up replacements for whatever was destroyed. This article is a quick look at how the operation, er, operates, with some trendy language that’s not suitable to be read aloud in the workplace. When all your friends say phones will be back quickly enough they won’t need ham radios, refer them to this page. It took 52 hours to get the destroyed router replaced with a jury- rigged set up in tractor-trailers after the attacks on the twin towers. (In part because everyone had to drive there because no flights were allowed, but in every disaster zone incoming flights are not a given.) AT&T was in their trailers for three months before the destroyed equipment was permanently relocated and installed. AT&T’s goal is to have up to 40 semis on scene and up and running 96 hours after total destruction of a major telephone office. Thumbnails at the bottom of the article enlarge to show the gear. Navy radio training manualAimed at junior radiomen (sorry, girls), the “Notes on Servicing Radio and Sound Equipment, U. S. Navy,” was published in 1942. It’s a good basic introduction to electrical circuits. Events
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