Winter has most assuredly arrived. I took a halftime opportunity to clear the driveway when we hit around 3″ of snowfall. We’re projected for 7-8 overall by the end of this storm, so I’ll be back out there later this evening. Winter was late, it was not absent.
Inputs
1: Caught up on some of the insanity of our political system via the latest ep of Pablo Torre Finds Out, in which we learn about Ron DeSantis having aimed his petty, vengeful eye on the New College of Florida, where he threw out the members of the board of trustees, replaced them with right-wing sycophants, and destroyed the institution’s mission out of spite. Because it’s PTFO, the eye through which we see this effort is the lens of sport, where the new president of the university created a mission for the admissions department to replace their historically academically minded student body with as many athletes they could possibly jam into the school, which had previously had zero sports programs on campus.
Ron DeSantis is a small man, in both body and spirit, and while some see him as some alternative to the nightmare, he is merely a different shade of asshole. Florida is worse off for him, and America would be worse off with him in wider power.
2: Bit of a different video than the previous, wherein someone went through the leaked source code for Grand Theft Auto V and found the most amusing of the comments left in the code base at launch. It’s gratifying to know I’m not the only one commenting my code with this level of honesty.
3: DARPA is building a prototype of an airplane with no externally moving control surfaces (no mechanical ailerons, elevators, flaps, etc), the X-65. This harkens back to the bit from a week ago in the Journal, about the mankind’s pursuit of flight and the Wright Brothers’ development of their flyer. One of their early prototypes didn’t use any flaps or moving controls, but instead altered directions by bending the fuselage through the weight of the rolling pilot pulling on control ropes and twisting the airframe into a new shape to turn. The DARPA project will be a bit more advanced, “using jets of air from a pressurized source to shape the flow of air over the aircraft surface, with AFC effectors on several surfaces to control the plane’s roll, pitch, and yaw.” I’m fascinated by the approach, if quite curious about a number of factors inherent to the design1What is the process for holding this pressurized air and delivering it to the surfaces? How is it regenerated during flight? If it isn’t, uh, what happens when it runs out? What do the nominal values for the airframe look like? Is it naturally a lifting body (and what does that mean for takeoffs and landings) or naturally not (and, then, same question) and so on and so on., and will keep an eye out for more information in the future post-testing.
Projects In Progress
Some more educational time and tinkering today, with the falling snow as a backdrop for staying indoors and staring at the laptop screen.
Notes:
- 1What is the process for holding this pressurized air and delivering it to the surfaces? How is it regenerated during flight? If it isn’t, uh, what happens when it runs out? What do the nominal values for the airframe look like? Is it naturally a lifting body (and what does that mean for takeoffs and landings) or naturally not (and, then, same question) and so on and so on.