![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Bits and asides...
Apr. 27th, 2001 07:12 pmThe local classical station, KRTS, keeps touting something called "Body Solutions" as a weight-loss formula that requires no exercise or special diet. A call to the manufacturer reveals that the protocol for taking the concoction involves eating nothing in the three hours prior to sleep, and then taking one tablespoon of the formula with a glass of water.
I suspect that, if one follows the rule of "nothing solid for three hours prior to sleep," most folks'll lose weight anyway. Two of the announcers at the station claim to have used the formula for several months, and say they have, indeed lost weight.
Segue...
The rumor mill has the Russians having already started fueling operations on the Soyuz launch vehicle. If this is so, it will be very difficult to postpone the launch past May 1, since to do so will require the rocket to be drained and then cleaned, inspected, etc., which will take some time, on the order of weeks. Seeing how the Soyuz space vehicle on orbit is reaching the end of its service life, delay is unacceptable.
On the other hand, so is having a Soyuz show up while Endeavour is docked. Scuttlebutt says that the Soyuz would have to sit in a parking orbit near the station until the Shuttle departs, but I'm sure the Russians figure they can dock to the FGB with the Shuttle still docked to the Lab, but seeing as how there is a flight rule that explicitly forbids such a situation, the only outcome I can visualize is one hell of a discussion between TPTB on both sides.
None of this may come to pass, though, as much of the foregoing is sheer, partially informed speculation.
Segue...
I watched U-571 last night, and seeing all the leaks in the boats reminded me of an old colleague with whom I worked in Florida. He was a draftsman who fought in World War II from inside a sub in the Pacific. I remember him telling me that every war film featuring a submarine ever shot was bogus in at least one particular, and that was that the real boats leaked when running submerged. This movie, apparently, is the exception to the rule. Otherwise, the movie was well done, though historically inaccurate (yes, stuff like that matters to me).
The value of such a mission would not have been the capture of the Enigma itself, but that of the code books, which set forth the settings for the machine for every day of a given month. In real life, the British Navy organized a couple of raids on intelligence ships disguised as fishing trawlers, and the captured code books trimmed the time required to solve intercepted Engima messages by 90%.
Segue...
My first brush with the work of Claude Shannon in information theory came during my second semester of thermodynamics back when I was an engineering student.
It was Shannon who developed techniques to determine the bandwidth of a communications channel, one of whose offshoots was the determination that - if memory serves - a single character of an English text message contains only 4.8 bits of information (which means that the remaining 3.2 bits are redundant, which formed - indirectly- the basis for the development of data compression techniques).
Shannon's interests went beyond information theory, and extended to a description of how to build a chess-playing computer (the general structure of the design is still used to build such algorithms today), to the construction of a robot that juggles, and many other zany things.
Claude Shannon died this past February, and though I never met the man, I just feel this sense of loss that I cannot explain. He was a giant.
Segue...
I'll be working the Execute Package again all weekend long. The scheule for next week is in an e-mail that I'll open tomorrow...I love surprises. Rumor is there will be a 12-hour simulation next Wednesday, but that they'll try to find someone with whom to split the hours. That'd be good, because I am getting a mite tired of working without breaks. That one-day-in-severn deal that so many use to schedule rest days is looking very good right now.
Time to start getting ready to hit the hay...
Cheers...
I suspect that, if one follows the rule of "nothing solid for three hours prior to sleep," most folks'll lose weight anyway. Two of the announcers at the station claim to have used the formula for several months, and say they have, indeed lost weight.
Segue...
The rumor mill has the Russians having already started fueling operations on the Soyuz launch vehicle. If this is so, it will be very difficult to postpone the launch past May 1, since to do so will require the rocket to be drained and then cleaned, inspected, etc., which will take some time, on the order of weeks. Seeing how the Soyuz space vehicle on orbit is reaching the end of its service life, delay is unacceptable.
On the other hand, so is having a Soyuz show up while Endeavour is docked. Scuttlebutt says that the Soyuz would have to sit in a parking orbit near the station until the Shuttle departs, but I'm sure the Russians figure they can dock to the FGB with the Shuttle still docked to the Lab, but seeing as how there is a flight rule that explicitly forbids such a situation, the only outcome I can visualize is one hell of a discussion between TPTB on both sides.
None of this may come to pass, though, as much of the foregoing is sheer, partially informed speculation.
Segue...
I watched U-571 last night, and seeing all the leaks in the boats reminded me of an old colleague with whom I worked in Florida. He was a draftsman who fought in World War II from inside a sub in the Pacific. I remember him telling me that every war film featuring a submarine ever shot was bogus in at least one particular, and that was that the real boats leaked when running submerged. This movie, apparently, is the exception to the rule. Otherwise, the movie was well done, though historically inaccurate (yes, stuff like that matters to me).
The value of such a mission would not have been the capture of the Enigma itself, but that of the code books, which set forth the settings for the machine for every day of a given month. In real life, the British Navy organized a couple of raids on intelligence ships disguised as fishing trawlers, and the captured code books trimmed the time required to solve intercepted Engima messages by 90%.
Segue...
My first brush with the work of Claude Shannon in information theory came during my second semester of thermodynamics back when I was an engineering student.
It was Shannon who developed techniques to determine the bandwidth of a communications channel, one of whose offshoots was the determination that - if memory serves - a single character of an English text message contains only 4.8 bits of information (which means that the remaining 3.2 bits are redundant, which formed - indirectly- the basis for the development of data compression techniques).
Shannon's interests went beyond information theory, and extended to a description of how to build a chess-playing computer (the general structure of the design is still used to build such algorithms today), to the construction of a robot that juggles, and many other zany things.
Claude Shannon died this past February, and though I never met the man, I just feel this sense of loss that I cannot explain. He was a giant.
Segue...
I'll be working the Execute Package again all weekend long. The scheule for next week is in an e-mail that I'll open tomorrow...I love surprises. Rumor is there will be a 12-hour simulation next Wednesday, but that they'll try to find someone with whom to split the hours. That'd be good, because I am getting a mite tired of working without breaks. That one-day-in-severn deal that so many use to schedule rest days is looking very good right now.
Time to start getting ready to hit the hay...
Cheers...
