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Showing posts from November, 2020

Restoring Speakers

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Seems like everything I have is hitting that age where things just sort of wear out and deteriorate. Case in point, I recently reactivated my home office “battlestation,” a slab of tempered glass (similar to GLASHOLM , but different) that used to be part of an IKEA desk-type-thing (a couple of FINNVARD trestles ), sitting atop a pair of HON filing cabinets. It was equipped with: An Ergotron Neo-Flex Combo Lift Stand An old Dell 2007WFP (1680x1050, with VGA/DVI/Composite/S-Video connections, I’ve had it probably 13 years?) Klipsch ProMedia 2.1  THX-certified speakers that, when working properly, sound incredible . A circa-2018 SpaceSaver M that already has two repair stickers on it, and is giving me double 't' characters periodically when I hit that key, sigh (on the flip side, I’m really loving the Keychron K2 hot-swappable with the Kailh Box Navy switches ...) But. The Dell monitor would flash on for a second or so (just long enough to see it was producing a picture from the

Aborting a Take-Off: An FAA Occurrence

 A lot of pilots don't realize this, but aborting a take-off once the aircraft has crossed the hold short line onto the runway, is an “occurrence” that the local FSDO is supposed to investigate! http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FAA_Order_8020.11D.pdf - Ch. 6, ¶ 6 (emphasis added): Air Traffic Reports to Flight Standards. ... ATO employees are mandated to report all observed or suspected occurrences which meet the MOR criteria (Reference FAA Order JO 7210.632, ”Air Traffic Organization Occurrence Reporting”). The preliminary reports are received by Flight Standards through the ATQA program or the CEDAR program. It is Flight Standards’ responsibility to analyze and validate the reports through an analysis of the air traffic data. When validated, the investigator should take appropriate actions to mitigate any future reoccurrence of the event by the respective operator, pilot or crew. https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/JO_7210.632A.pdf - Appendix A (“Mand

Flying with Dogs

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I fly with my dogs regularly. I have two: A now senior ~40 lbs street stray mutt who a Wisdom DNA test tells me is 25% Siberian Husky, 37.5% an indistinct mix of herding, Asian, and hound breeds, and then equal parts GSD, Chow, and American Staffordshire Terrier - all ears!  A ~60 lbs. Labrador, both my senior boy (who passed last year) and my puppy (who's now almost a year and a half). In fact, the puppy flew home from the breeder (Santa Maria) in the back of a Mooney (crated). Physical Logistics They've ridden in the back seat (Piper Arrow, Mooney M20E) but it's not the most comfortable for longer trips. On other trips, I’ve removed the rear seats from the 1972 Arrow II entirely (easy; takes seconds, without tools).  In the M20F I took out the rear seat backs . If I’m traveling on a longer cross-country, I will always look to take a plane that has similar rear seat capabilities. I make a nest for them; a 72"x72" puppy pad goes down first to protect the interio

My way.

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You see this a lot in aviation, and in law: “I do it my way.” Even when all the research has established that way is obsolete and based on bad, old information. See the ever-present debate over lean of peak vs. rich of peak. (We follow the teachings of Mike Busch and John Deakin in this  hangar! Lean of peak.) Or shock cooling . Or WordPerfect. (Okay, the last one’s debatable, I hate some of the idiosyncrasies of Microsoft Word, and as much as I wish it was up to the task, LibreOffice still falls short in key areas, like generating tables of authorities. But network effect is real and the battle’s won; it’s a Word world.) Researching severability clause language (because that’s a thing I do, apparently; childhood dreams fulfilled), I stumbled across this blog, now offline but thankfully captured in the Wayback Machine . Here’s an excerpt that spoke to me: It’s just possible that “your way” is made up of all that is clearest and most effective. But the notion of doing things “you

Browser Tab Hygiene

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I leave too many browser tabs open. Or did. I’m trying to get better. Especially after, the other day, watching my reasonably healthy MacBook Air drop 2-3% off its battery charge every minute. It’s a “mid-2012” model I got in, I think, early 2013. I replaced the battery about 4 years ago (I used an Anker SKU that doesn’t appear on Amazon’s site anymore); it has 164 cycles on it currently: I mean, you occasionally see the banner Safari sticks at the top of a tab, cautioning the page was using significant energy, but until I started digging in I never realized how power hungry so many modern web apps are! Google Mail is a particularly egregious (but useful) offender, and any of those “click bait” pages slathered in ads will bring your computer’s performance, and battery life, crashing down around its ankles. Watch the Energy tab of the Activity Monitor sometime; it’s illuminating! The specs on this thing aren’t amazing (Core i5 1.8 GHz (i5-3427U) CTO with 8GB RAM;  Transcend 240GB JetDr

Locking VLC into a window size across files

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OMG, I’ve been annoyed by this forever, never thought to see if there was a setting I could tweak... The issue: Watching multiple videos in a sequence (playlist), like, e.g., the free Eclipse and Java video tutorials . You resize the window and lay things out so you can follow along in the IDE, and take notes, comfortably; everything’s going great, and then the video ends, the next one starts, and VLC resizes the window to the native resolution of the video clip. No more:   (At least as of 3.0.17.3, this is accessible via: VLC Media Player -> Preferences... -> Show All button, then expand Interface / Main Interfaces / macosx, and uncheck the box for “Resize interface to the native video size")

Using a real camera as a “webcam”

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My cameras are great, but they’re older (Nikon D5100, Sony a6000), so I can’t use the newly released ( Engadget re Nikon) ; solutions ( Nikon ; Sony ( Mac )) to turn them into webcams. But I can set them up with “clean HDMI” ( Sony ) (with the Nikon, hack it a bit to, e.g., disable the “live video” time-out and enable “clean HDMI” output * ), and then capture the stream with a USB device, like the ikan HomeStream . The system requirements for the HDMI dongles are somewhat hefty (there are some that have onboard hardware encoding); in the case of the ikan, it’s: CPU:PC i5-3400 or above; NB i7-3537U 2.0GHZ or above;  Graphics card: PC NVIDIA GT630 or above; NC NVIDIA GT735M or above; RAM:  4G RAM. (Here’s hoping my 2015 MacBook Pro (2.2 GHz Core i7 (I7-4770HQ), 16GB, “Intel Iris Pro” GPU) will run it capably. Edit: Per David Serrano at ikan, “It’s compatible.”) Gotchas I’ve stumbled across so far: The Nikon D5100 has a “mini C” HDMI port ( adapter ). To get output on the HDMI port, go

New Plane Developments: Return of the Retract; Electric Inches Forward

Electric. Pipistrel Velis Electro receives a European type certificate . (Happened back in June ?) Type certificate . Gaining access to the U.S. market laterally should be significantly less onerous than going for FAA type certification directly. Interesting note: “The motor, which Pipistrel certified separately, is available to other aircraft manufacturers.” I recently discovered there’s a growing community of folks in the experimental space using Zero Motorcycles powertrains: Electic Sonex Xenos Commute to Work  (Gabriel DeVault’s other videos are also worth checking out) Zero DS propulsion system for aircraft power Motorcycle Motors as Powerplants for Experimenters NASA continues to refine it’s “outside the box” (multiple small motors)  X-57 Maxwell electric airplane. (It’s the geek in me, but anything with an X- I kinda swoon for. Even a bastardized P2006T. Bring back the X-29 !) Retract. I love Paul Bertorelli ( classic ). Resurgence of the RG . Diamond DA50 RG Pipistrel Panther

Wisdom Dog DNA Test

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For xmas last year, I received a Wisdom DNA test kit. I’m dying to know what this critter is made up of. The county pound we pulled her from (she was a street stray) identified her as a Shar-Pei / German Shepherd. I see the Shar-Pei, but I’m thinking Australian Cattle Dog (which includes Dingo), and maybe Belgian Malinois. You have to see her in motion to really get the ACD, but she reminds me a lot of Max Rockatansky’s companion in Road Warrior. She definitely knew exactly what to do, the first time she ever encountered livestock ! The process so far (with a nod to the fact that we’re still in the COVID-19 pandemic, with all the attendant disruptions): October 21, 2020 (Wednesday) : She had to go in for surgery to have some masses removed (they were benign). Perfect opportunity (no food or water for hours prior) to finally swab her cheek. Samples were mailed back to Wisdom that day or the next. October 25, 2020 (Sunday) : The post office shows the sample having been delivered to Wis

Keychron K2 Hot-Swappable

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For work-from-home sanity and in anticipation of an upcoming holiday road trip, and after stumbling upon the newly released Keychron K2 wireless hot-swappable keyboard , I took the plunge. I’m tapping this post on the keyboard, hooked up to my Hackintosh via USB. (It wasn’t being seen via Bluetooth, but, this machine is about 9 years old and I don’t even know what version of Bluetooth the cheap dongle ‡ I stuck on it is using... I’ll play with Bluetooth more at home, with the 2013 MacBook Air and/or 2015 MacBook Pro it’ll be used with mostly. So far, so good. I opted for the white backlight, blue switches model, which is $79 ($99 shipped). Shipping was from China, via DHL, and happened quickly; I placed the order late in the night of Thursday, October 29th, and it was delivered this afternoon, November 4th (Wednesday). In the box are: The keyboard (duh) Windows style key caps (it comes with “option” and “command” key caps, for Mac / iOS users) A keycap puller A keyswitch puller The US

The Impossible Turn

 I need to actually write something here, but I wanted to gather these resources in one place where I can find them again, for when I actually sit down to do that. (tl;dr version: If you’re not box-climbing over the airport, and haven’t departed from a huge (7,000' or so) runway with a strong motor, look for a flat place straight ahead or ~30° to either side and just put down; you’re not going to make it back.) So You Think You Can Make a 180 Back on Takeoff? An In-Depth Look at Engine Failure Option Impossible Turn

Sunglasses for flying

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A topic that comes up fairly frequently. I fly with American Optical non-polarized aviators : AO used to make the sunglasses issued to the Air Force and America’s astronauts. That contract is now in the hands of Randolph Engineering, who makes essentially identical sunglasses , and charges more for them. As to the polarized vs. non-polarized debate, I stick with non-polarized. It’s what the FAA recommends , and doesn’t conflict with polarized visors in motorcycle helmets, etc. Works for me. YMMV. I used to be able to get the AOs for a pretty good price (in 2018, $52.41!).