One year ago today: September 17, 2013, murky guitar chords.
Five years ago today: September 17, 2009, centers on music and bands.
Ten years ago today: September 17, 2004, wars to come?
MORNING
First off, here is some artwork. It's actually a rendering of a pretty blonde lady, ah, they are so cute when they are young. What's unique is this picture was drawn pen to paper but without any human touch. You are looking at the second picture drawn by my robot arm. It is defying all efforts to find the correct scale. It also loves to seek the edge of the paper, shown at the top. The large sweeping archs are also smooth where they should be jerky.
One thing, it draws fast. About five times faster than expected and it is evidently capable of quite fine work. I had to remount the motors on a heavier base as the motor torque is considerable when it gets chugging along. Beginners avoid this project. The instructions suck. And the software is completely without documentation. As for the picture, just tell the auctioneer it is some of my earlier work.
This is a test. If you see this, it is my first foray into Windows 8.1. The claim was that it was easy to use as an overlay of XP, but as usual, MicroSoft lied. There is a complex learning curve even to turn off that idiotic Calibri and the line spacing—it takes forever to find the commands to override that nonsense. Even the ruler has disappeared. Those with passworded routers will notice the system demands you re-establish an account. It won’t be long before every one is locked out until they show picture ID to access their own files. Mark my words.
Am I wrong? Why not look back 10+ years ago when I described the onset of the student loan rip-off. Today one school was prosecuted, one that few have heard of. In my instance, it was Broward Community College which gave me the gears. BCC is the scum-bag outfit that tried to upsell me into a $16,000 program when I responded to an ad for a $29 evening course. That's the counselor who told me if I didn't learn computers, I was reneging on my duty to help my grandchildren with their homework.
Ah, okay. Now I know you can read this. Writing is not the problem, it is whether this machine could handle my 32-bit files. The Win 8.1 interface will take some getting used to and I don't have a touchscreen. Never did like those things, but the uneducated love them. Same with trackballs. Their popularity is inversely proportional to the user's IQ. Anyway, I cannot find all my programs yet, although I know they are on this computer. But I've decided to become familiar with "Android" screens. Because this part of the world is susceptible to mass stupidity attack.
NOON
We've got us another heat wave, meaning I spent the afternoon indoors. I thought, why don't I read the back chapters of my navigation textbooks. There's a revelation for you. The books are about nine chapters long each. All the painful work since, when was it I bought those, June, and I'm only at chapters three or four. The fact is, I haven't touched the complicated stuff yet. Here's a photo of an "Admiralty Barometer", as an example of things I don't understand yet.
This is an overview, but an overview is not contained in any of the books. Those authors throw you kicking and screaming into the deep end. If I'm any good, most people should be able to follow what I say next concerning the procedure of celestial navigation. The starting point is that you always know roughly where you are. That's right. Even if you are lost, you have a rough idea where you last were and unless you stepped into a teleporter, you are still somewhere in the vicinity.
The almanacs, and before you run out and buy one, not every almanac contains the right information, have lists of monthly tables that indicate where the sun or planets are at every day and hour of the year. These are known positions that can be calculated centuries in advance. The trick is to pick one of these known spots nearest to where you think you are. Right now, I know I'm near Ft. Lauderdale, for example.
By using the almanac, of these known positions, I can use a second set of tables with the name "Sight Reduction" to find out how far I am from the known location (Ft. Lauderdale) and roughly what direction it is. That's it. Sounds easy. It isn't. In reality you need at least two of these "readings", then you plot them on a blank map, and where the two lines cross is your "fix", which gets ever more accurate as you gain experience.
Remember my first fix? I was something like 721 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. I can manage a little better than that now. I rarely use the sextant any more because there is no need unless I'm in a different location. The mountains of paperwork around here represent the majority of my work and frankly I enjoy the mind-boggling calculations to the handling of delicate and expensive equipment.
I'm told navigation is a two-person job and I'm beginning to see that. I think I'd be good at the ciphering part others don't like. Add a rolling boat in the middle of the ocean and the calculations can be so tedious that a man working alone can miss a scheduled reading. Now I know those old movies with the navigator poring over his charts is no Hollywood stereotype. Give him some slack, he isn't taking it easy in the nice warm cabin while the rest of the crew is busting their chops
EVENING
Wow, looking at my hits, I see that this seat-of-the-pants talk about celestial navigation is, you might say, good for business. How about I tell you of some spin-offs from this study? That is, other things I stumbled across along the way. Foremost is I have to admire these guys that sail long distances alone, but not as much as you'd think. They aren't really doing full duty because the ocean is mighty big and once out there, the currents are weaker.
When accuracy is important, a brute force approach works with navigation. Take four or five readings in a few minutes, then average them once you get back inside. Sextant readings are technically the easy part. You can always do the math later. Related to this is rote memorization. I've said how it is possible to memorize the steps and come up with the answers. I deliberately chose not to do things that way. As a result, there were times when it took days to realign my poor brain cells.
And I still am not so sure about the moon and planets. The sun, no problem, and a couple of the stars I can draw on accurately. But the moon and planets move in patterns so strange you don't want to know. So, how is it these old sailors can circumnavigate the globe? Being crazy helps, because they have to go around the Cape of Good Hope, that 30° belt of storms around South America. But they must generally be using a method of navigation that's been around hundreds of years.
So how do they do it? Latitude is easy to measure, that's how. Even the oldest maps show accurate latitude. So the trick is to rapidly sail north or south until you reach that latitude, then sail east or west until you bump into your destination. At the other extreme, I've seen beautifully bound books of hand-written charts by meticulous navigators. It is possible to imagine the voyage.
They write their calculations, up to five times every day, on the back of the plotting sheets so you can see the handiwork. But unless you know how to follow the figures, I can't say it is that great a read. Still, glance through a set if you get the chance. Sailing trips of a couple months are the best, as they result in, oh, I'd say, about a hundred plotting charts.
What's my overall impression of celestial navigation to this point, some three months into my study? Fascinating, but not for those either over- or under-logical. I speak with authority that you can get into corners by overthinking the situation. Would I ever do this again? Probably. It hands back a lot of personal satisfaction. Don't forget, I chose the easiest known method called "Sight Reduction". I don't want to even know about anything more complicated. And for my next project, let me just say that navigation will be tough to beat.
ADDENDUM
While copying my disks in preparation for wiping out this computer's idiotic Windows 7, I watched the video documentary, "Clash of Worlds". I recommend it, there is more information there than probably all but specialist American scholars ever possess. Of particular interest is the relationship to the Sepoy rebellion, where mercenaries thought (but apparently had no proof) that bullet grease contained pork fat or something. They went on a rampage, killing white women and children and to this day object to being called heathen savages. What, they ask, is the connection?
Now, the British reprisals were just as bad; there are few situations less godly than an Englishman with bible and pistol in hand. The Muslim extremists retreated to the Afghan border believing that the jihad could only begin from an area purely controlled by their faith. They are today fighting for something they thought 150 years ago, that the west was trying to force them to convert to Christianity. If doing so is wrong back then, why are they trying force Islam on the world today? Oh yeah, that connection thing again.
Maybe so with Christianity conversion, but that was the English, not the rest of the West, and that was in 1850. There are two factions, the general feeling that Islam should be spread by good works, and the holy war crowd. But like all terrorist groups, if there is no permanent enemy to rally against, the war-mongers must create one. The bottom line is always, progressively speaking, a less modern group employing sneak attack against a more modern one. Modern being defined by which group is more different than it was, in this case, 150 years ago.
The hypocrisy I find is with the war crowd and how they extol religious fundamentalism. But as you watch the video, they extol it with Sony camcorders, Acer laptops, Kalashnikov rifles, and Nokia cell phones. Apparently they mean fundamentals of religion only because every other aspect of a Western society is visibly fair game. I would not be the first to notice the dangers of supplying advanced technologies to such cultures. Selling nuclear power plants to the one's radical enemies is just not a good idea no matter how you slice it.
Not controversial enough? Let me think what I can come up with. Oh, I know. The new Russian market over on Federal. So far 100% of the clientele is upscale northern European Caucasians. To date not one exception. Amazing for that neighborhood. Full of polite white people who keep their voices down and disciplined children. No food stamps. What? I'm not supposed to notice? What if it is true? Oh, I understand the objection, but I'm not trying to get elected. Okay, okay, I take this paragraph back. None of what I saw was real, it never happened. Happy now? Geez, already.
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