As you like it

Last day of the year, so I looked at the stats for this blog in 2024 to see - month by month - which blog entry you liked most. Just to see what I could learn from the access counts. Here are the ones most accessed :-

January : Holocaust Memorial Day
February : How big is a Megaton bomb?
March : Silent letters
April : The Judas Pyre
May : Slaughtering the pig ;-)
June : Dracarys!
July : Mallard
August: Education
September : Vocabularies
October : Colours of the Fall
November : Covid :-(
December : Those vampire ladies

Which of these were YOUR favourite? Sadly there does not seem to be style preference, so expect no major changes therein. But as my health deteriorates, there may be less blogging in 2025. Nevertheless, Happy New Year to all my blogreaders!

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on December 31, 2024 permalink Comments Email

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Another hard read

Back at home for Xmas hols, I have been ploughing through Peter Woit's book Not Even Wrong. Hard going. Since the mathematicians got into Physics it has gotten less attractive and indeed less fruitful. In particular String theory. Woit's book can be summarised as follows : String theory, over the past 30+ years, has been unable to make ANY prediction which can be tested by experiment. So it cannot be proven right, nor even wrong.

It is only highly readable if you skip over the various theories mentioned and don't follow the background literature. When the Sunday Times say it is accessible, it is because there are NO formulae mentioned. But yes, persuasive. But too hard for most readers.

Lisa Randall's book Warped Passages was a much better read. And Roger Penrose's book The Road to Reality, although a hard slog, is much more explanatory.

Paperback, 290 pages , ISBN 978-0-099-48864-4, if you MUST try it.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on December 26, 2024 permalink Comments Email

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Those vampire ladies

Friend Daniel, who runs the bakery/cafe in the neighbouring village, is a great fan of Halloween. On october 11th I showed you some of his halloween decorations for his bakery. But inside is also a great photo of two vampire girls from 120+ years ago which I did not show you yet. Now Daniel has lent me this photo so that I can show it to you. As you walk past the (still) photo you see the two girls in dresses of that era, as seen below.

But then, as you continue to walk past this old photo, suddenly it changes. The girls open their mouths, displaying their vampire teeth as shown below, One step further on and the photo returns to the original as shown at the top!!! But it is a still photo. Can any of you blogreaders explain to me how this works (by dropping me an Email)?

At home, I held the photo while SWMBO made a video as I turned the photoframe. Logically equivalent to just walking past the photo. Here it is.
Note also how blood appears in the photo as it turns.

Comments(1)
Mike sent me a link explaining how this works, see below.
Billions of Versions... wrote " I had Lady Haunted take a look at your post. She said she has a few of those and they are called Lenticular printing. See this wikipedia page. Thankyou , both of you, for the explanation of how this is done.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on December 10, 2024 permalink Comments Email

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On the Sámi lifestyle; a photobook.

Friend Peter, fellow archer and biker, rode his motorcycle up to the top of Norway this summer to see old friends from 20 years ago. He brought back this great book for SWMBO and myself. Called "Boazojahki" (a Sami word meaning Year of the Sheep) , and registered as ISBN 82-7900-126-3, it was published in 2001 and was written by Trym Iver Bergsmo a norwegian professional photographer. He wrote it in Norwegian, Inger-marie Oskal translated it into Sami and Carol.B.Eckman into English. All the magnificent photos are by Trym and there are three columns of text, so this photobook is in three languages. He spent four seasons with the Sami people, documenting their way of life (living from reindeer husbandry). There are 175 pages.

The Sámi are the traditionally Sámi-speaking Indigenous peoples inhabiting the region of Sápmi, which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The region of Sápmi was formerly known as Lapland, and the Sámi have historically been known in English as Lapps or Laplanders. This was a culture and lifestyle I did not know much about, so this book has been an enjoyable eye-opener for me.

Traditionally, the Sámi have pursued a variety of livelihoods, including coastal fishing, fur trapping, and sheep herding. Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding. As of 2007 about 10% of the Sámi were connected to reindeer herding, which provides them with meat, fur, and transportation; around 2,800 Sámi people were actively involved in reindeer herding on a full-time basis in Norway alone. For traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved for only Sámi in some regions of the Nordic countries.

This is the photo on the front cover of the book.

And this is the first page; note that we have a book signed by Trym himself.

Recommended, even for the photos alone.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on December 5, 2024 permalink Comments Email

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A CFII's #2 rule of thumb

As regular readers of this blog may know, one of my roles in this life has been as a certified flying instructor (CFI) and as a CFII , certified flying instructor (instruments), teaching them to fly blind, i.e. on instruments only. Back in January of 2014 I wrote a blog article explaining how to fly a blind approach on instruments, entitled 200 and a half which was well received. However, I did not explain flying the glideslope, thinking it was obvious, so let me expand on this here.

In this capacity as a CFII, I want to comment on the crash of a DHL freight carrier flying from Leipzig (Germany) to Vilnius (Lithuania) last week. But first let me explain a little about flying a glideslope in general. Here is a vertical cross section sketch of our local glideslope at EDLP. The runway is the thick black line to the left of the red letter N at 0 feet above the airfield. The glídeslope is the light grey arrow descending usually at 3° and in this case showing a track of 236°, The two darker grey vertical darts are marker beacons, OM the outer marker and MM the middle marker, the more important one. You start descending from 3000 feet when intercepting the glideslope at the final approach fix, then track 236° as you descend.

You follow the glideslope using the CDI (Course deviation indicator) shown below. Ideally, the vertical and horizontal bars should be exactly on the dotted lines then you are exactly on track of the ILS (instrument landing system).

As you descend on the glideslope you will intercept the fan markers. These are shown as the 3 lamps at the top left of my COM/Nav set; on other planes they may be positioned elsewhere. When intercepting the outer fan marker the blue lamp will flash, and a low beeping noise heard in your headphones.

Continuing down the glideslope you will intercept the middle marker (MM), our critical point. The yellow lamp marked M will flash and a higher pitch beeping heard in your headphones.

The MM is critical. You are at minimum altitude (200 feet). If your plane is not stable with the CDI centered, then GO AROUND !!! If you are still in cloud then GO AROUND !!! Rule of thumb : GO AROUND is the safe thing to do!

As I read the reports, the DHL freight carrier was off course and WELL below the ILS. So he picked up the nose, and, since he was slow for the landing, thus stalled the plane, resulting in the crash. The pilot was killed and the other 3 people on board seriously injured.

Yes, I know I am preaching, but there is no excuse for this. CFII`s #2 rule of thumb !!! Rule #1 is to set priorities : Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on December 3 , 2024 permalink Comments Email

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