Saturday - pretty sick, just laying
about and watching teevee. I did go out and get a haircut - and had to
sleep for three hours after that effort. Samson's got nuthin on me.
Todays favorite quote: "Who knew that hamster's fur was so flamable?" Charlie Epps, NUMB3RS.
NCIS continues to degenerate. This weeks episode was a naval admiral
dealing drugs. Yeah. No-one was in the least surprised or shocked. He
was killed, for revenge, by Gibbs mother-in-law. He deliberately fouls
up an interrogation so that she won't be convicted, but in the end
everybody just takes his word for it that she was innocent. Despite all
of Abby and Ducky's evidence I guess. And despite the suspicion of the
Washington plainsclothes detective.
Yeah, the plot was that stupid and incoherent.
Gibbs has a new love interest, by the way, a female trial lawyer half his age. Yeah...that's believable.
Friday
5 March
2010
Friday
- it took a lot longer than I expected, but I got everything (almost)
into the Explorer. It filled the back, seats down, about 3/4 of the way
up to the car roof. Still, not bad. It would not have been possible to
get it all in, and also either the dresser or bed or end table. So,
good riddance to those!
Ferdinand Magellan is really just the Anglized version of Hernando de Magallanes, the Spanish version of his name, he was in reality a Portuguese: Fernão de Magalhães.
Portugal was then a deadly trade rival of Spain and Magellan had served
Portugal very well. But he had unwisely backed the losing claimant to
the Portuguese throne early in his career, and despite loyal service
afterwards never found any real favor with the winner, Manuel.
Eventually, rebuffed in his attempts to enlist Manuel I in his schemes to sail west to the Spice Islands he asked for permission to leave that king's service, at it was granted.
At the court of Charles V in
Spain he convinced Charles to support and pay for an expedition
commanded by himself. This was remarkable - many Spaniards suspected
him of being a spy and plant, and there were some (reasonably)
competent Spanish mariners that wanted to attempt the same trip. But
Charles was desperate - he wanted to become not just a king but The Holy Roman Emperor
- he needed money for bribes, and Magellan was his best bet at
obtaining the spice and money he needed. Indeed, he had to borrow the
money to outfit the fleet, and give up part of his profits.
There were Spanish captains appointed in the other ships. The Spanish
captains in general were suspicious and attempted numerous mutinies on
the trip; the few survivors lied about this and blackened his name when
they returned to Spain. He had battles with the mutineers, executed
some, stranded others, tortured some and put some in chains; and
allowed a few to return to service. There was no gratitude for this -
they plotted and lied after reprieves with as much enthusiasm as ever.
That he was able to reach the Phillipines in his tiny fleet - down to
three vessels by then - is extraordinary. His judgement failed him
there, and he died on the island of Mactan (27 April 1521), over
confident in his guns and armor, converting the heathen, and getting
embroiled in local politics and fighting for one local island king
against another.
The book mentions Magellan's "circumnavigation" but he died midway
through this voyage. According to Wikipedia he is considered the first
man to circumnavigate the world because he had journied to the East
before, to the Malacca on Malay Peninsula, and thus covered all the
globes degree's of longitude, albeit from two different directions.
Looking at a map, it seems like it was not quite 360 degrees - Malacca is on the west side of the Malay peninsula and still a few hundred miles west of Mactan. Close enough, I suppose.
The men of the little Victory, only 18 orignal crewman, were the first to complete a one-way circumnavigation. Of the fleet of 5 ships the San Antonio's captain had mutinied and turned back at the Straits of Magellan once out of Magellan's sight, the Santiago was wrecked on the southern coast of South America, the Conception
was deliberately stripped of useful supplies and burned when they
realized in the Phillipines that the fleet didn't have enough men to
sail three ships, and the damaged Trinidad attemped
to sail back to Spain by an easterly route, spent too much time doing
it, was captured by the Portuguese, and eventually was beached and
destroyed in a storm.
Had not one Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian (Venetian) scholar, kept an
accurate and detailed log, Magellan might never have gotten the credit
he deserved.
It's an amazing story. I can remember being bored by it in school: some old guy in funny clothes and a little boat looking for pepper - how stupid it seemed.
There is one more thing to add. The Portuguese king, Manuel, had a good reason
to rebuff Magellan - the king already had a sea route to the Spice
Islands, and a military/trade presence there. It was ultra top secret -
the profits from this were enormous - and he couldn't have Magellan
publicly opening up a western sea route than anybody (Spain, England, Italy, the Dutch) could use. It would depress the price.
Thursday 4 March
2010
Thursday
- Well, the guy liked the room and wants to move in mid-month.
I'm happy with that, and that he's paying me a couple of bucks for the
old yard sale stuff that passed as furniture. Also the old 14" teevee
that I never use. I think most of what is left will fit in the Explorer
on Friday.
While reading 'Sailing from Byzantium'
a few weeks ago I kept running across mentions of the city walls of
Byzantium (Constantinople). For about 700 years these remained
completely impregnable. The Byzantine Empire sometimes collapsed to the
point that it consisted of only the city of Byzantium itself, but until
the Venetians and the 4th Crusade, no-one was ever able to breach them.
There were unsuccessful sieges that lasted years and the Byzantines
themselves believed that they were favored of God.
So I looked on the web, to see if there were any remnants. And, wow, there are! Wikidpedia has lots of info, and there are a lot of other sites.
From Wikipedia, general layout of Constantinople.
The walls were 13.5 miles
around - 22 Kilometers. There were multiple walls built, as the city
expanded over the centuries and as the military threats changed. There
were two main types, the Land Walls, which run north-south in the image
above, and the Sea Walls, which ran all the way about the city, at the
waters edge. The "final" land wall was the Theodosian, left side of the
image above, consisting of a moat, then a lower wall, then a higher
wall:
From Wikipedia, reconstructed section of the Theodosian land wall.
The sea wall was somewhat lower, abutting the water. No good images
of remnant or reconstructed wall, but here's a graphic of what they may
have looked like-
Constantinople, a Sea Wall visualization.
Wednesday 3 March
2010
Wednesday
- I went by the boat, everything looks OK, no damage from the Great Tsunami.
Somebody said there was a 1' swell in San Diego, and there is even a 10
minute long video on YouTube. Ten minutes to watch a 1' wave? Who has
that kind of patience? Is it at the beginning, and then you wait
another 9 minutes and 50 seconds waiting for it to hopefully
repeat? Is it at the end and you waited 9 minutes and 50 seconds
for a 1' wave? Who has that kind of patience? Not me.
They have free wifi there at the Marina now, so I signed up for that.
But since I've a data card it's really kind of pointless. I think
Verizon may now allow tethering of the EVDO phone so that it may be
used as a modem for laptops and such, so maybe I can get rid of the
data card expense. I'll have to look it up. People do it - against the
Terms of Service - but I'm an honest kind of guy.
Somebody wants to rent my room in Ventura, already, and I'm not even
moved out. Sheesh. So I'll meet the guy, and the landlord, tomorrow
night. There is a lot of cleaning and packing to do. I'll try to sell
him some of my old furniture - I really don't want it any more, it just
takes up space in the house.
Tuesday 2 March 2010
Tuesday
- back at work. Cleaning out the apartment in Ventura - there is
somebody that wants to come by and look it over before renting for next
month.
Monday 1 March 2010
Monday
- still sick. Bah. Did a bit of cleaning up and putting away, but just going up and down the stairs made me dizzy. Oh well.
I read an article on the loss of Air France 447, over at Der Spiegel. This is the airliner that dropped out of the sky on a Rio-Paris run last year.
It
seems that the aircraft sends telemetry, in a fairly limited but
constant stream, back to a ground station, which is how they were able
to deduce quite a bit without finding the black boxes. Attention has
moved from thunderstorm activity to an older and deadlier menace.
It
wasn't particularly a well written article, but apparently the
precipitating cause was static/pitot icing. Gahh. That's something
that's been killing people for decades,
but it's a bit shocking that it can take down a modern production
airliner. The article suggested that the requirement that they only be
certified to temperatures at 40kft was a contributing factor, but as I
recall that is the tropopause, where the temperature starts to go back up,
which is probably why it was chosen. It was suggested that the de-icing
system on the particular static-pitot system was inadequate. Well,
maybe.
They then prosed on a bit aimlessly about the AirBus
fly-by-wire and computers-in-charge philosophy, which is probably where
the problem went from very serious to fatal. The computers shut down
the engines - and wouldn't allow the flight crew to restart them.
It took 4 minutes to glide down to sea level, and there are indications
that the flight crew was trying desperately to get the engines going.
Jeez, how horrible. Apparently the passenger's were not notified -
nobody had their seatbelt on, and the deceleration on hitting the water
(nose up, 5 degrees) was 36G.
So, probably seat belts wouldn't have helped any.
AirBus
philosophy is that the computers have final say - Boeing philosophy is
that the pilots have final say. Both have their drawbacks, but I think
I prefer human rule.
I was present, but not part of the project, when NASA Dryden lost the X-31
- but not the pilot - to icing in 1995. The static/pitot system
essentially tells the aircraft what it's speed through the air is, and
from that computers control the "gain" of the control surfaces. When
the system iced up the computer interpeting the control laws that sat
between pilot and plane thought it was going slow and started putting
in huge movements of ailerons and rudders for even minute movements of
the stick - making it uncontrollable.
In the case of AirBus the computer apparently shut the engines down, but I don't know why it would do that.
Sunday 28 February_2010
Sunday
- Feeling under the weather. Darn. I was afraid of this - my throat
felt itchy last night, but I was trying to persuade myself that it was
just work and the high desert air. Bah.
Book #8 was The
January Dancer, by Michael Flynn. While not extraordinary it
was good enough to make me want to search out his other recent works. I
have already read his Firestar
series, and In The
Country of the Blind.
Book #9,
therefore, was The
Forest of Time, also by Michael Flynn. I think short stories
are actually more to his strengths - this was an anthology of short
stories and some of these were hard to read and didn't necessarily go
the way you thought (hoped). Recommended.
Yeah, plenty of time to read and catch up on Tivo.
