Friday
- did a bit of work in the morning, and then headed off to Lancaster.
It was nice in Ventura, but well into the 90's in Lancaster. It is
supposed to be warm all weekend, perhaps a 100F or higher.
Cat and Birds.
Thursday 9 July
2009
Thursday
- a long day at work. Not much to say about that.
On the holiday trip I finished two books.
The first, on audio, was Patrick O'Brian's The Reverse of the Medal*, for Book#32 of the year. This is the sequel to The Far Side of the World,
and takes place directly afterwards. The two almost form a single book.
It was excellent, as always. Even the teenage boys along in the
Explorer for the trip enjoyed it - looking up from their Gameboys and
Ipods to chuckle at particularly amusing parts. The only letdown is the
exposure of the villians, deus-ex-machina, rather than by the efforts
or insight of Aubrey or Maturin.
The next was The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins, for Book#33.
If a bit slow by modern standards it still had some well drawn
characters and descriptions that made it worth while. This was a
Project Gutenberg book, on the Sony Reader. The description - in her
own words and of others - of the horrific Miss Clack, is, in
particular, hilarious.
Wednesday 8 July 2009
Wednesday
- everyone knows my opinion of Airships: Is there anything they can't do? Well, except for standing up to nuclear weapons? The Airship vs the A-bomb is a recent post at
airminded.org. I haven't read the full report they refer to, so I can't say for
sure that it was a fair test of the Blimp. And certainly it might be
possible through engineering design to increase the survivability. [via
Croanaca]
Blimp Franklin at the "plumbob" nuclear test. Note photographers in the foreground.
In other news, now that I think about blimps, I seem to recall that
Lockheed is going to build a blimp for a big phased array radar
demonstrator, sub-scale, only 400' or so, long. There was an article in
the AV Press that I read whilst getting the cars oil changed a few
weeks ago. Here is an Aviation Leak Week article.
Hmmm - low areal density flexible composite materials - can you say rubber coated canvas?
Tuesday 7 July 2009
Tuesday
- a longish day. Fun in the morning, out measuring a channel feature in
advance of some modifications to be done. But back inside at the
computer after lunch, for the rest of the day.
Monday 6 July 2009
Monday
- back to work.
Sunday 5 July_2009
Sunday
- well, back from the vacation at the beach. Pictures and comments as time and energy permit.
