There Is Justice In The World
It's no secret to readers of The Pond that I am a fan of the Chicago Cubs. By extension, therefore, I am a detractor of the St Louis Cardinals. It's as natural as breathing, which Cardinals fans tend to do through their mouth. One cannot be a Cubs fan without hating the Cardinals. I assume Cardinals fans feel the same way about the Cubs, though to be honest I've never met one articulate enough to voice such things. But I digress. Last season, the Cardinals won the World Series, and it would be churlish of me to not congratulate them on having done so. One of the heroes of their run was Skip Schumaker, a 31 year old utility player who still goes by the nickname "Skip." Schumaker, whose name bears a startling resemblance to that of Mercedes F1 driver Slappy Schumacher, was at bat in Game 4 of the NL Divisional Series against the Phillies when a panicked and frightened grey squirrel dashed across home plate.
Yes, this was a real commercial.
Unsurprisingly, St Louis went completely gaga for the squirrel, nicknaming it "The Rally Squirrel" and practically deifying the rodent. T-shirts, songs, plushies, you name it, the Cardinals milked it for all it was worth. Never mind that they had a good team on a hot run, The Rally Squirrel was the MVP.
Today, Topps Inc released an image of Skip Schumaker's 2012 baseball card.
As with most people involved with the St Louis Cardinals, Schumaker has zero sense of humor. "I'm not frustrated, I just think people are going to look at it and
laugh and that's ridiculous," said the 31-year old who still goes by Skip. "I don't care about what I look like or
anything but it's literally just a squirrel that has nothing to do with
me. It's not disappointing, it's just ridiculous"
You just won the World Series, Skippy. Lighten up a bit, particularly since it's a limited edition card that will be replaced with a regular one in a short while. It's funny... get over yourself.
Name This Mystery Ship XI
Well, this is a fine kettle of fish. I received an e-mail this afternoon from the Official First Friend of The Pond, Vaucaunson's Duck. Attached was a challenge: "Name This Mystery Ship." After working on it for an hour or so, I gave up. And now it's your turn... and I don't know the answer!
My guess is that it's a destroyer, destroyer escort, or frigate. The flag looks Dutch, but my searching didn't turn up a match of any sort. I guess it could be a cruiser, but it seems like the armament is awfully light for that.
Name the ship and if Vauc can verify that your guess is correct, you win a post on a topic of your choice! As usual, I won't write about politics, religion or pr0n... anything else is free game. Have at it, y'all!
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Yep, she's Dutch. And yes, she could be a cruiser, and her armament is awfully light for that, because she's a light cruiser.
The Royal Dutch Navy light crusier Tromp. She was repeatedly claimed sunk by the IJN, apparently. That puts her in good company.
For some time, I've been looking for a ship photo with the idea of stumping Wonderduck. I figured the photo had to be from an off-line source - so I was pleased to find this photo, framed in an antiques store. I initially thought it wasn't online anywhere, but was wrong about that.
Just six hours from posting to solving - the power of the hive mind.
"The ghost ship." Now why wasn't there a counter for it in Victory in the Pacific, like the De Ruyter?.
Posted by: V. Duck at January 30, 2012 10:39 AM (XVJDy)
Apparently I was the only person who didn't know that this was the Tromp. I have an e-mail from Siergen who named it correctly, but admitted to imagesearching for it. I received a textmessage from Brickmuppet two minutes before FDM posted his comment, naming the Tromp.
However, since FDM was the first to leave his guess in the comments, he gets the "prize." Name your post... or should I assume you want another "Name This Mystery Ship"?
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 30, 2012 01:12 PM (OS+Cr)
If you think the Tromp was lightly armed for a cruiser, you might want to take a look at HMS Delhi following her 1941 refit in the US, or the Capitani Romani class as built. Heck, Tromp's sister might even qualify.
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at January 30, 2012 07:03 PM (JMzrv)
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CXT, I still owe you a post... you need to get me a topic, though.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 30, 2012 07:31 PM (f/6aJ)
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Sorry about that. The last couple months had been hectic, not to mention physically demanding that I had completely forgotten about it.
Posted by: cxt217 at January 30, 2012 08:38 PM (JMzrv)
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Hehe I spentat least two minutes finding links!
Anyway I can't think of anything in particular, so another Mystery Ship it is!
Posted by: flatdarkmars at January 31, 2012 12:04 AM (I55Es)
8
what happen to old ship. please, anybody explain to me what happen to any old ship. it is not like an airplane where it's would be easy to sell to other country when it get old
.
Posted by: justjoe at April 18, 2012 06:57 AM (N80Xh)
A lot of them do get sold. An American WWII light cruiser was sold to Argentina, who renamed it "General Belgrano". It was sunk by a British submarine during the Falklands war.
But if they can't be sold, usually they're torn apart so the steel can be recycled. Thousands of tons of scrap steel is worth quite a lot.
Sometimes they are ditched in a ship's graveyard, left at anchor to rust away.
Some get taken out to sea and deliberately sunk with scuttling charges. Sometimes this is done to create attractions for scuba divers, in service of the tourist industry. Sometimes they do it in hopes of starting coral reefs.
Sadly, being recycled for razor blades will be the fate of USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65). As much anyone would like to preserver her as a museum ship, the cost and effort involved in removing 8(!) nuclear reactors will leave the ENTERPRISE suitable for nothing else when she decommissions after her current deployment.
I do like the idea of trying to save her island, since that is the most iconic and identifiable part of her. It is a lot easier than saving the entire ship.
Posted by: cxt217 at April 18, 2012 10:34 AM (Y/p7u)
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Tearing apart any CVN will be challenging. But lifting the reactors out will be a lot easier if all the decking above the reactor is removed first.
The story of the Challenger disaster and the associated fallout has been often told, and I won't repeat it here. What I do want to mention is that I'm one of those few people who was actually watching the launch live on CNN when everything went pear-shaped. The three major networks were showing normal programming; Space Shuttle launches had already become old hat by 1986. To CNN, then only six years old and not the monolithic success it is now, launches were still important news.
And to a young Wonderduck, they were all fascinating. That I had the flu, or something flu-like, was only a minor impediment. I had stayed home from school and was sacked out on the couch, covered with a couple of blankets, as I watched the whole terrible event live. Some say that the loss of the Challenger was my generation's Kennedy Assassination. I suppose that's so. It certainly changed me.
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Our teacher was showing it live in the classroom.
Awkward.
Posted by: GreyDuck at January 29, 2012 10:32 AM (eHm8o)
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I was in the school bookstore at Drexel when someone said the Shuttle blew up, so I went over to the student center and watched the TV, heart in my guts.
Posted by: Mauser at January 29, 2012 08:44 PM (cZPoz)
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I always had a closer connection (for lack of a better word) to Columbia. Maybe because it was the first. I know the Challenger disaster affected me; I found a little essay I wrote voluntarily amongst keepsakes and memorabilia recently. Still, it was just one of those big, dumb accidents at the time. The Columbia accident really tore me up, though. Of course, that's coming up here in a few days. History can be funny (odd funny, not ha ha funny, in this case) sometimes.
Posted by: Ben at January 30, 2012 11:47 AM (RalIr)
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I blame Environmentalists for Columbia. They changed the foam formulation because environmentalists objected to the chemicals given off by the foam curing. That's the old foam that actually stayed on the tanks. NASA ended up sacrificing seven lives on that Green Altar.
Posted by: Mauser at January 31, 2012 05:00 AM (cZPoz)
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Except that Columbia was using one of the last of the old tanks, with the older foam formulation.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 31, 2012 06:08 AM (+rSRq)
AS-204
45 years ago today, the US space program suffered the first fatalities of its history. Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died during a routine training mission when their Apollo capsule caught fire. The conflagration was aided by a 100% oxygen atmosphere in the capsule. A single ignition source was unable to be found. A study did find, however, that the standard nylon astronaut pressure suit of the time could generate enough static electricity to create a spark just from regular movement in the capsule's flight seats.
Grissom, White, Chaffee
Their mission was officially designated Apollo-Saturn 204, or AS-204, until April 24, 1967. At that time, NASA retired the name Apollo 1 in their honor.
Sadly, they would not be the last to die in mankind's quest for space.
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Indeed they weren't. I knew Richard Scobee when I was a little kid. Don't remember much about him personally, but he took me to NASA once for a tour. I didn't have a lot of interest in the space program after Challenger.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 28, 2012 12:53 AM (GJQTS)
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And Google chooses to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the "world's largest snowflake". *facepalm*
Posted by: Ed Hering at January 28, 2012 01:07 PM (4deSp)
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In their defense, if they commemorated every great tragedy their site would look pretty bleak.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 30, 2012 05:37 AM (PiXy!)
F1 Pr0n: Caterham CT01
Historically, the opening of the F1 season comes when Ferrari debuts their new challenger. They are always the first. Pride of place should be with them, truth be told. It's not like they aren't the oldest and most famous team in Formula 1, after all. Which makes the first debut of the year all the weirder, because it's not the oldest team, but one of the newest, which rolled out their steed. The team that was Lotus and now is Caterham stole a march on the big guys today, releasing pictures of the CT01. Ladies and gentlemen, F1 Pr0n is back!
Some interesting stuff here from Caterham. The sidepods are shorter, making for a more compact, almost wasp-waisted, chassis. Unseen in the picture above is that there's a vent in the back of the airbox to add cooling to that which the smaller sidepods lose. The exhausts are low-mounted and positioned in the lee of the sidepod's airflow. The leader at the clubhouse turn is that they'll blow over the lower elements of the rear wing, trying to claw back some of the downforce lost by the banning of blown diffusers. However, the F1 sites across the interwebs are all abuzz over the nose.
To be charitable, it's not pretty. To not be charitable, it might be the ugliest nose since the 2004 Williams "Walrusnose"... or this one. Unfortunately, that stepdown is mandated by the new tech regulations. Yes, really. It's a safety feature, designed to keep cars from being launched, somehow. I think it accomplishes the feat by being so repulsive that no self-respecting F1 chassis would deign to approach it. I tells ya, Morty, it's like it got taken back behind the woodshed and got beaten with the ugly stick. And because the rules require that the nose be no more than 550mm above the ground, but the rest of the body has to be 650mm above, we'll probably see this on EVERY car this year.
BEHOLD! The era of the ugly F1 car is upon us, and woe be unto those who think that the individualism of the teams is being legislated out of the sport by the FIA.
The next rollout is McLaren on February 1st! See you then for more F1 Pr0n!
From Daylight to Warbonnets
A lot of railfans love the locomotives. They like being able to look at these huge pieces of machinery and be able to rattle off statistics about how much horsepower it has, or how much it can pull, or how many of them there are, or whatever. And who can blame 'em? One of the (few) things I appreciate about diesels is that the railroads realized that they could be painted in company colors... and so they were. And what colors! Everywhere you went, the most boring of engines could be made interesting by the various liveries. For example, as a young duckling here in Northern Illinois, one of the most common railroad lines to see was the Chicago Central, a junior member of the Illinois Central company. They ran from Chicago to Iowa with a spur going north to Albert Lea, MN... a more boring trackmap would be difficult to find. But then you saw the locomotives.
Cardinal and White, and they look glorious. I don't even know if the company is around anymore or if they were om nom nommed by CN when they took the Illinois Central, but I still remember the plain but beautiful look of the engines.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Let's take a look at some of the better known and beautiful liveries throughout rail history, shall we?
1
Chicago Central as a company still exists under the Grand Trunk holding company
I wouldn't call it legendary, but I still fondly remember Chessie System's colors from when I was growing up.
Posted by: JP Gibb at January 25, 2012 07:47 AM (VSD03)
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I didn't get to see too many trains growing up in the middle of Los
Angeles, but every time we went out to the desert or into the Sierras
we'd see trains and I'd be pressed up against the window of the car
counting cars, checking out the locos, etc. I remember seeing lots of
Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and Southern Pacific locos going through Mojave and up either side of the Sierras.
In my board game heydays, my gaming group like to play the railroad games like Empire Builder, 1830, 1856, etc. It was amusing a while back when I was talking to a train fanatic, and I knew more about which lines ran to what cities and what kinds of loads they would deliver than he did. Of course I wasn't anywhere near his league on the trains themselves.
Posted by: David at January 25, 2012 11:41 AM (+yn5x)
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Most of the rail lines had someone in the art department at either GM or ALCO create their livery in the early days of diesel. The "Warbonnet" scheme even has a US Patent (which is odd, since as a paint scheme you'd think it'd be a copyright), but the patent holder was a GM employee.
Posted by: Ranger Rick at January 28, 2012 01:19 AM (wQTBU)
Random Anime Picture #68: What, Again? -Sora no Woto, Ep13
Didn't I just do one of these a couple of days ago? Well, yes, yes I did. Except that one actually had a point to it (i.e., don't watch Kill Me Baby). This one, on the other hand, is some attempt at an explanation of my lack of actual content here at The Pond of late. One could argue that it's been 18 days since my last post of any real value. I will concede the point. It's not like I don't have big things to write about... indeed, I've got two major posts staring me in the face (Best Late War Fighters, Katawa Shoujo).
Thing is... I just don't feel like writing. Part of it is work-related; we've been going great guns all month in preparation for the start of Spring classes, which occurred this week. Tuesday, to be exact, which might tell you just how sick I really was this past Wednesday. Anyway, work is part of it. The aforementioned Katawa Shoujo and Skyrim are also reasons why I haven't blogged much. It may not be a coincidence that my output went through the floor the same day that KS was released. I'm enjoying my time in two radically different imaginary worlds for radically different reasons. I just... look, I've been here at The Pond for a long time (well, in blog time at least). I still enjoy blogging, it's just a different sort of enjoyment now.
Back in the "old days," when nobody knew who this Wonderduck guy was, I wrote to a) entertain myself; and b) make people aware that there was a hyperintelligent duck with phenomenal (for a duck) typing skills out there who might have some interesting things to say. Then once I got noticed by a few folks who decided to stick around, the "new day" of blogging dawned. In some ways, I felt I had to keep one-upping myself. This led to mammoth posts that took waaaaaaay too long to write; 4100 words and eight hours? For an episode of Rio Rainbow Gate!?
Maybe I'm just getting old, but the immense need to write seems to have gone away at some point over the past few months. Maybe having that tooth pulled let it all leak out? I'm not going anywhere, don't fret none 'bout that. I'm not even taking a hiatus. I'm just... going to take it easy for a bit. Not for long, and you might not even notice a difference, but I'm going to stress less about blogging and try to have myself a little fun again.
Besides, the F1 thing starts up in earnest this week when Caterham rolls out their 2012 car to begin the F1 Pr0n season. I weep for my lost weekends...
1
Could be worse, you could be like me and write long anime reviews that nobody apparently reads. It would probably help if I did more current stuff, rather than the things I've been getting from NetFlix....
I also have a LiveJournal, but I had to make all the personal entries private because I had a stalker. An amazingly pathetic one, but a stalker nonetheless, so the audience there is limited to about 60, maybe, if they haven't all migrated to Facebook. That and Russian spammers on the public entries (the politics stuff).
I get more readers for my Mad Scientist porn on DeviantArt than I do for my blogs.
Posted by: Mauser at January 22, 2012 06:33 AM (cZPoz)
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Mauser, I read them. FWIW it took a couple of years of writing and a couple of lucky breaks for me to have any readers at all.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 22, 2012 09:17 AM (f/6aJ)
3
Also FWIW, I too double-space the break after a period. I thought I was the only person who did.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 22, 2012 09:21 AM (f/6aJ)
4
Speaking of F1, I'm not sure Bahrain will happen again this year. The Shia are very restive to the Sunni elite & Iran is sticking it's big nose in the mix. A good overview is here: http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/pothot/20120123.aspx
Posted by: von Krag at January 23, 2012 10:40 AM (XIY2m)
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I was taught waaay back when to use a double space after a period. Apparently this was never actually official per any style guides, and there is some controversy about why a lot of typing instructors set their students on that path.
Posted by: David at January 23, 2012 01:44 PM (+yn5x)
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Take my ducks to Wisconsin? ME? I am offended, David.
VK, yeah, I know. My desire to write about F1 right now is somewhat near zero.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 23, 2012 07:21 PM (f/6aJ)
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The problem with long reviews is how fragmented the field and the tastes are. With 40 new series every season, and a person of average free time following perhaps 3 at best, you have to hit big to evoke any kind of response. I essentially ignore anything on the Net that is not Idolmaster, for example.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at January 24, 2012 04:15 PM (G2mwb)
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But Wonderduck, some of your flock is from Wisconsin...
Posted by: Siergen at January 24, 2012 07:13 PM (PBxDs)
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 24, 2012 07:21 PM (f/6aJ)
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Heh, now you've got me thinking back to try to remember which blog/site I mentioned the double space thing on and just how much you've read.... *grin*
Posted by: Mauser at January 25, 2012 05:43 AM (cZPoz)
But Wait, There's MORE!
Dragging my food-poisoned butt to the car this morning, I breathed in the refreshingly cold air. When it's 12° with no wind to speak of and the sun shining, it's actually rather pleasant assuming you're dressed correctly. Got in the DuckMobile and she started right up, no problems! I let her warm up for a couple of minutes as I caught my breath (I'm still kinda shaky after the events of yesterday), then headed off to work.
As I pulled into the main lot at Duck U, the DuckMobile suddenly started to jerk and, well, chug, particularly at low RPMs. Rubbawhut? I pulled into a spot, shut her down, went into the Duck U Bookstore and immediately called Ricotta's Automotive, official mechanic of The Pond.
It only felt like this.
A few hours later, the owner hisownbadself calls. "Well, you've got an ignition problem; there was an oil leak into the distributor. When I called Toyota, parts would be $1000 and take 3-5 days for shipping." *pause* "Then I called a local parts guy, he's got a new one for $400 and it'll be here on Friday. The only difference is that it doesn't say Toyota on it. Oh, and it'll void the warranty."
Cue peals of laughter; the DuckMobile first took to the roads in 1996. She'll be repaired Friday afternoon, probably. Weather permitting.
Food poisoning and car problems; two lousy tastes that really suck together.
1
Did you do something to take over Brickmuppet's curse?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 19, 2012 08:07 PM (+rSRq)
2
Why the hell does it cost $400 for a dist? What's it made of, iridium-plated gold?? And how does an oil leak into it ruin it, anyway?
Dang.
Posted by: Ed Hering at January 19, 2012 08:10 PM (4deSp)
3
Ed, I simplified the story. Short version, it's nearly the entire ignition system. Distributor, cables, so on and so forth. If it's an electrical system, they'd have to replace the ignition "black box", which is of course easier but more expensive. If it's a mechanical one, there's parts galore that need to be changed.
I think. I was still kinda in a daze, throw in the lingering aftereffects of the food poisoning and he probably could have been saying that he found a colony of arugla-based lifeforms in there and I wouldn't've noticed.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 19, 2012 09:07 PM (f/6aJ)
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Did the quoted price include labor? My guess is yes.
Posted by: karrde at January 20, 2012 07:29 AM (nEln+)
5
Is it just me or Ricotta automotive is run by a short, redhead meganekko?
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at January 20, 2012 06:53 PM (G2mwb)
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If it was, I'd get my car serviced much more regularly.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 20, 2012 09:07 PM (f/6aJ)
Food Poisoning
Tuesday night I had soup and sandwich for dinner. Around midnight, I started getting stomach cramps... and then all hell broke loose. For the next 15 hours, my life consisted of the bathroom and my bedroom, trying to get some sleep.
After she got out of the library, The Librarian brought over more bottled water, some gatorade and most importantly, pepto-bismol. By 7pm I was feeling better. By 8pm I was able to get up the energy to turn on the computer and chat with Brickmuppet, who'd gone through the same thing recently.
I finally managed to fall asleep at 10pm. I'm still weak and shaky, but things are pretty much done, I think.
It was a lot of things. "Fun" was definitely not one of them. I'm at work right now, but the only reason I'm here is because it's the first week of classes. Any other time, I would have stayed home.
The fact that I called in yesterday, which I've only done once before in my nearly 8 years at the Duck U Bookstore, will give you an idea of how sick I was.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 19, 2012 02:53 PM (OS+Cr)
Those ducks were from North Korea, out to get another American capitalist roader-running dog. No, the term capitalist roader does not make any more sense to me than it did to Lee Kuan Yew when he saw it in the 1970s.
Random Anime Picture #67: Oh Dear -Kill Me Baby, Ep02
Pilots everywhere are frantically trying to change course right now.
I'll be blunt: Kill Me Baby is not funny. At all. I watched 10 minutes of the first episode and was surprised to find that it still had 12 minutes left to go... I thought for sure I'd gone through a half-hour already. That is NOT a good sign. Also not a good sign: Wonderduck skipping ahead during a show. I just don't do that, particularly during the first episode of a show I was looking forward to. It's not bad or anything, it's just not funny.
By the halfway point of Ep02, I was actually saying "Kill Me Baby" to my duck collection, hoping one of them would take me up on the offer. No such luck. When the above scene came on, I actually envied the one being choked out. Then I closed zoomplayer and went off and played some Skyrim.
What I'm saying is that Kill Me Baby is not worth anybody's time. Just writing this little post took more time than KMB was worth. If I was in a better mood, maybe I'd turn it into the next Rio Rainbow Gate!, but it'd fail for lack of anything interesting.
Don't watch it. Don't download it. Don't even read this post... oh wait.
1
This is the show based on the four-panel comic about the middle-school assassin, right? Yeah, the manga was snooze-worthy, too.
Posted by: Mitch H. at January 18, 2012 01:26 PM (jwKxK)
2
Correction - none of your ducks have killed you yet.
I know for a fact that you have ninja ducks who will wait until your guard is down, possibly when you are sleeping. And at least one of your ducks is probably still very angry at how last weekend's games turned out...
Posted by: Siergen at January 18, 2012 05:20 PM (VoVql)
Ph.Duck, re: Our Lunchtime Conversation...
...Albert Einstein was born in 1879, Adrian Sutil still has not found a drive, and here's the Wikipedia entry for "visual novels" (per our discussion of Katawa Shoujo). Not re: our lunchtime conversation, over at FARK, someone photoshopped a picture of Rumpole!
Pretty darn cool, eh? Not that he was ever that energetic, but it's a neat bit of art.
Preach It, Sister...
I feel much the same way right now. Tuesday is the start of Spring Rush, yet we're already stupid-busy at the Duck U Bookstore. Part of that can be marked down to being a smidge shorthanded, but it really does seem like we've gotten more customers through our doors of late. But there's a deeper, darker thing going on as well. My knees are killing me. Last Wednesday both of them hurt badly enough to make me weep when I got home. Unfortunately, there's no position that I've found that makes them not hurt, just some that hurt less. That'll make Rush Week particularly spicy!
As you can guess from the picture above, I'm still playing Katawa Shoujo. I've finished two paths, just stumbled into a third, and have the instructions on how to get into a fourth sitting here next to me. Based on the two routes I've completed, I'll temper my excitement for the game a bit. It's no longer "brilliant", just merely very very good indeed. However, considering that it's an independently produced game made by a collection of amateurs working for free and released for the price of nothing, it's really quite astounding.
On a different note, I've now gone well over a month without a cigarette. I think I'm handling it fairly well... I only occasionally want to massacre entire villages with my bare hands and drink the blood of my victims.
My ALCO PA post seems to have nudged my "I trains" button again. Here's the image I'm currently using as my computer's wallpaper:
Inside a Chicago & Northwestern roundhouse, circa 1942.
1
Of course, one proof that you're a railfan is that you know what a "roundhouse" is, and why it is round.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 15, 2012 12:12 AM (+rSRq)
2
Glucosamine. When my old job was killing my knees, I started on that and it really helped. Assuming it's a pain in the joint and not the tendons/ligaments.
Posted by: Mauser at January 15, 2012 01:30 AM (cZPoz)
3
Steven: ...and why a turntable isn't just something you play records on.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 15, 2012 01:51 AM (f/6aJ)
Since we have locomotives on the brain, here is a railroad trivia...
Once upon a time, there was a place called the Baldwin Locomotive Works. It was biggest locomotive factory in the Union, which meant it was the biggest locomotive factory in the US. The Baldwin Locomotive Works alone built more than four times the number of locomotives built in the states that would make up the entire Confederacy in 1861. That number still managed to surprise me when I first read it, even it really should not have.
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at January 15, 2012 04:34 PM (Wbp5N)
6
For such a dominant company, Baldwin was strangely short-sighted. They remained a huge player in the steam loco market until the diesel came around... at which point, they fought against dieselization. Then WWII came around and the War Production Board told a struggling Baldwin to make ONLY steam engines.
After WWII, demand for steam cratered. 98% of all locos built in the five years after the war were diesel... and Baldwin wasn't building all the remaining 2%. While their sharknose "F7"-style locos were good, they weren't good enough to break through the EMD domination and Baldwin went away in 1956.
They had built nearly 71000 locos.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 15, 2012 08:40 PM (f/6aJ)
7
Isn't it General Electric that dominates the market now?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 16, 2012 12:56 AM (+rSRq)
8
Yep, ~70% of the North American diesel market is held by GE Transportation. The remaining amount is controlled by EMD.
The GE plant in Erie, PA is home to the "world's largest air-hockey table."
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 16, 2012 01:16 AM (f/6aJ)
9
In the realm of locomotives, I was a little surprised by a chance to see one today.
Took a trip to visit the Henry Ford Museum, and they have one the Allegheny locomotives on display. It's a 2-6-6-6 engine weighing in at 778000 pounds, and reputedly the largest steam locomotive ever built.
The museum had a collection of other locomotives present, though the Allegheny was the king of the display.
Posted by: karrde at January 16, 2012 03:00 PM (ogrlY)
For such a dominant company, Baldwin was strangely short-sighted.
Actually, they weren't short-sighted, I'm sure. Clayton Christensen wrote a classic book about it, "The Innovator's Dilemma", which is commonly misunderstood, especially by people who read reviews of it. In particular I suggest reading the chapter about excavators and how the likes of Bucirus-Eerie failed.
Posted by: Author at January 19, 2012 09:25 PM (G2mwb)
Ducks In Anime: Yarrrrrrr! -Bodacious Space Pirates, Ep01
I'm... not sure about this show. On the one hand, everything seems to be perfect. The characters are believable, or at least they're as believable as a show like this ever gets, the artwork is quite appealing, the animation is acceptable, there seems to be plenty of room for both humor and drama, and there's a bodacious space pirate rubber duckie. Oh, and "Bodacious Space Pirates" would be a great name for a band. Like I said, perfect.
Bodacious Space Pirate Waitress
On the other hand, everything seems to be perfect, and that scares me. This could go so very very wrong... which would actually be pretty fun. I find that I'm quite looking forward to Ep02.
1
Anything that can pull you out of Skyrim (which has no ducks) must be worth a try...
Posted by: Siergen at January 14, 2012 11:49 AM (vA1YL)
2
Somehow I knew you'd be checking this out once I saw the duck...
(Two episodes in, here, and so far it hasn't really missed a beat. Which worries me. It can't go that well. Can it?)
Posted by: GreyDuck at January 19, 2012 09:10 PM (eHm8o)
3
I'm sure something will go wrong eventually; no show is perfect. Maybe they'll show Ms Bodacious Space Pirate with organized and coiffed hair or something.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 19, 2012 09:12 PM (f/6aJ)
What Could Pull Wonderduck Away From Skyrim?
I really didn't think it was possible, but I've actually not played Skyrim for the past four days. I've been busy cheating on it playing a different game. It doesn't look anywhere near as good as the latest entry in The Elder Scrolls series. It doesn't get the adrenaline pumping nearly as much as a dragon swooping down on you. There's no fireballs flying around the screen, no flashing swords, no murky dungeons or scary monsters. But still and all, I have had my entire gaming time consumed utterly and completely by this markedly low-rent game... perhaps because I've been waiting for nearly three years for it to come out. And what, you may ask, is this true paragon of gaming virtue?
It's been released... and it's brilliant. I reviewed the demo here, and none of Act I has changed... except that they've regraphicalized Emi, for the better might I add.
A review of the full game will be forthcoming... as soon as I get another path or two under my belt. I've only done one so far, and while initial signs are positive ("...and it's brilliant."), I've seen some thought that the route I've played was the best of the bunch. We'll see. In the meantime, if you're interested the full game can be located for free torrent-based download right here. No matter what, it's already a remarkable achievement, one that was five years in the making: a complete and total ren'ai game, in English, that's at least as good as any Japanese ones I've played. UPDATE: Brickmuppet and I get all recursive and stuff.
1
Popped an apropos screenshot up on my blog... ;p
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 12, 2012 01:15 PM (GJQTS)
2
I was going to give it a try, but the only tracker it's on is a udp tracker on port 80. For some bizarre reason (Mostly likely as a simple torrent reduction technique) my ISP blocks UDP on port 80. I suppose the idea is that port 80 is reserved for http over tcp/ip. They claim they use it for network management.
It makes EZTV particularly irritating compared to say, BT Torrent, because they strip off all but the udp trackers from their torrents.
Just changing the tracker to http doesn't help. However it appears that PEX and DHT are quite effective in this case.
Anyway, I've never tried anything like this before, so it should be interesting.
Posted by: Mauser at January 15, 2012 02:25 AM (cZPoz)
The "Acceptable" Diesel
I'm a railfan. Not a particularly well-educated one, I'll admit, but I have a huge soft spot (my noggin, most like) for trains. Like many uneducated but well-meaning rail buffs, I miss the steam era though it was already over before I came around. I also think that diesel locomotives all look the same and are boring as heck because of it. Yeah, like nobody has ever said that before, right? Even the cutesy nicknames given some of the diesel trains of today don't help: "Jeeps" and "Torpedo boats", feh. No, there's no way a diesel-electric engine can be as interesting as even the most humble of steam trains. One of the best moments of my life was riding on top of the coal tender of a steam loco at the Illinois Railway Museum whilst Larry, the husband of my cousin, played engineer for a time. Sure, once I took my glasses off I looked like a negative raccoon, and I stank of smoke like I'd just walked out of the Towering Inferno, but it was a wonderous experience, one that's long gone. For that alone, I feel like all diesel locos are evil.
This is how trains should look. Streamlined, steaming, and in black and white.
I'm not as knowledgeable as I could be if I spent my scant free time somewhat differently, but I'm still a sucker for locomotives, particularly the classic age-of-steam. Let's put it this way: A while back I found a torrent of the most dreary, grainy, boringly-narrated series ever made about the waning decades of British steam rail, and I sat through the whole damned thing anyway. Every other year I make sure that at least one of my wall calendars features steam locos.
That is one stylish diesel, right there, yessir.
Posted by: GreyDuck at January 10, 2012 10:30 PM (eHm8o)
2
GD, one of the stations on my satellite package is "RFD-TV", which I jokingly call "Rural Feed Delivery." It's for farmers and cowboys... literally. But for about six months at 4pm on Mondays, they'd show an hour's worth of railfan videos. Sometimes it'd be classic film of (say) the Santa Fe, but the next week would be modern video from some rail celebration in 2005.
Why, yes, yes I did watch them all.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 10, 2012 10:55 PM (f/6aJ)
3
When I was ten I vastly preferred diesels. I knew them all by sight and could easily tell a GP-7 from a GP-15 from an SD-40 from a "U-boat".
I liked diesels because I understood the vast improvement in efficiency they represented. It required one man to operate rather than two or three, and the awesome THUD THUD THUD of the massive two-stroke engines operating at full speed was an amazing sound.
I didn't get interested in steam locomotives, in fact, until I began working on a novel that began with a kind of "steampunk" setting, in 2000; and thanks to that I now have some interest in them.
Posted by: Ed Hering at January 11, 2012 05:04 AM (4X4NQ)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 11, 2012 10:10 AM (+rSRq)
5
The GP7's EMD 567 engine was a two-stroke V-16, as a matter of fact.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 11, 2012 02:32 PM (OS+Cr)
6
The idea lives on in the Deltahawk aviation diesels (actually it's improved in that the air is not being blown through the crankcase).
Posted by: Author at January 11, 2012 03:02 PM (G2mwb)
7
Believe me, I was surprised, too, when I learned that. They have a
redline of about 600 RPM and when one goes thundering by at full
throttle, believe me the entire town knows about it.
Posted by: Ed Hering at January 11, 2012 06:12 PM (4X4NQ)
On the contrary, Steven, most of the rail diesels currently running are turbocharged two-strokes - one of the latest of which was the EMD710 (16-710G3C-T2), approved by the EPA for Tier II Emissions Spec in 2004. The engine met spec through EFI rather than mechanically-governed injection.
Posted by: JT at January 13, 2012 02:55 PM (iStSI)
10
I guess, now that I think about it, that any engine using fuel injection (including diesels) could avoid most of the pitfalls of a two stroke engine, couldn't they?
In an engine using a carburator, the problem is how much gas-air mixture to blow through the cylinder when the valves are open. Too little and you have burned exhaust in your next compression cycle. Too much, and you have unburned gas in your exhaust. In the middle you pretty much get both.
But if all you're blowing is pure air (with a turbo, I can believe) then there's no reason to hold back. Really crank that baby, and end up with the cylinder full of clean air just before the valves close and the cylinder compresses.
Some (probably a lot of) clean air also blows right through and into the exhaust manifold, but so what?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 13, 2012 09:13 PM (+rSRq)
11
Not sure about railroad 2-strokes, but Deltahawk has a 2-stage compression: supercharger and turbocharger. The supercharger is necessary for starting the engine. Minimum starting RPM is 1200. For this reason, airplanes with Deltahawk cannot be hand-propped, which is a pity.
Note that these 2-strokes still have the usual problem with NOx emissions. Aviation diesels simply ignore the problem - for now. I am sure that railway people use urea or other chemical to reform or capture the oxides.
Posted by: Author at January 16, 2012 11:57 PM (G2mwb)
12
Oh BTW: Russian railroads continue to tinker with a gas-turbine engine. The power of 1 section is 11,100 hp.
Carnival Phantasm Ep09: Oh, SO Disappointing!Type-Moon's 10th Anniversary OVA Carnival Phantasm has been consistently hilarious throughout its run, even when you aren't all that familiar with the characters being parodied. For example, I've never seen Tsukihime, but I've been laughing harder at those skits than the Fate/Stay Night-based ones... and F/SN is one of my favorite shows.
However, I had heard a rumor that the 9th episode of Carnival Phantasm was going to be something I would find truly special... a Grand Prix race using the F/SN characters. Eh? Really? So it was with a sense of excitement that I started the episode... and imagine my surprise when the rumors appeared to be true!
Ooh!
OOH!!
WHOA!!!
My heavens, could it be true? I mean, sure, there was going to be silly things going on, but it really looked like we'd be getting a Formula 1 Grand Prix-style race for our enjoyment! We haven't seen one of those since Yakitate Japan Ep44! I was actually excited.
Oh. Never mind. Wacky Races... or maybe Scramble Wars. Darn it (*kicks imaginary pebble, sulks*).
I mean, Carnival Phantasm was probably the best chance I had to retire from blogging! As I said somewhere, if there's ever an anime with F1 and rubber duckies involved, I'd shut The Pond down with no regrets. And CP just blew it. Oh well... better luck next time.
1
You gotta admit: the pink pimpmobile is a classic.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 08, 2012 08:17 PM (+rSRq)
2
Oh my stars and garters YES... Rin as Penelope Pit-Stop...That is so...right for some insane reason.
I must find this show.
Posted by: brickmuppet at January 08, 2012 11:13 PM (EJaOX)
3
Honestly, I was quite dissatisfied with the first batch of these. Too much Neko Arc, too much one-note comedy (the Sailor Moon parody, the terrible comedy sketch... yes, okay, Sacchin is a comic character, but she's better when the comedy amounts to more than "she's a terrible comic"... to say nothing of the other two! Bad comedy is really hard to do right.)
And too many of the good bits (of which there weren't a lot) were cribbed from comedy doujin I read years ago. The one where everyone ends up sleeping in the sun on the futons, for example...
Did it settle down and get better?
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 09, 2012 05:53 AM (GJQTS)
4
I don't have an answer for you, Av. For the most part, I've had a ball with the entire OVA series, so I can't say that it "settled down." And I can't say what was cribbed and what wasn't, since I haven't read the doujins. It's all original to me.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 09, 2012 07:45 AM (f/6aJ)
5
Went and watched the next five. Complete turnaround victory. All the repetitive crap of the first four was gone, and nothing but good stuff and fun times left.
Now I remember... it wasn't doujinshi at all. It was actually Type-Moon's own comedy comics. (So you can't really blame them, they're their own scripts!) I thought the Sakura one was done considerably better than the comic, though - extra layer of humor through Sakura's own vanity, which was missing from the original.
How could they have missed the scene with a shirtless Archer riding on the front of the car, though? Come on, he's the only other character from -anything- who could pull that off.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 10, 2012 05:32 AM (GJQTS)
Argentinian Racing Pigeon?
Growing up in Duckford, Sunday night was PBS night. Masterpiece Theater (Danger: UXB for the win!) went into Monty Python's Flying Circus, followed a half-hour later by Doctor Who (Fourth Doctor will always be the best).
In between Python and Doc was the incredibly unfunny The Two Ronnies. The show, which ran from 1971 to 1987 on BBC1, is a perfect example of how the humor from one country may not translate to another, even if they nominally speak the same language. Ronnie Barker (the stout one) and Ronnie Corbett (the short one) are apparently revered as something akin to comedy gods in Britain, with the show consisting of sketch comedy, opening and closing news parodies, and the legendary catchphrase "It's good night from me." "And it's good night from him." Some FIFTEEN MILLION PEOPLE tuned in each week to The Two Ronnies, a number which I can scarcely credit. Perhaps they included dead people in the count.
I believe Official First Friend of The Pond Vaucaunson's Duck will agree with me when I say that it was the single most disappointing British TV show of all time, at least until Are You Being Humiliated Served? came on. Having said that, it wasn't entirely awful. Every now and again, they would manage to drag a laugh or two out of us there in our cozy midwestern homes as we stayed up too late on a school night. For example, allow me to present this:
To be sure, it's no Fawlty Towers, but this particular sketch is the closest to "funny" I've ever seen from The Two Ronnies. The "black moon rock" gag actually made me laugh. Well, enjoy, won't you?
1
I never laughed at that show. Not ever, not once. Ditto for the other one you mentioned.
Now, The Vicar of Dibley, that was funny. I don't know if that was ever shown on WTTW; I saw it on whatever the PBS station was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
...which would also run British SF series on Friday (later Saturday) nights. Red Dwarf and Doctor Who; and for a while they were running Blake's 7 after DW was over. (B7 was, for me, a disappointment, though the OP was pretty cool.)
But Two Ronnies? Not even in the same zip code as funny.
Posted by: Ed Hering at January 07, 2012 05:50 AM (4X4NQ)
2
Actually, I always enjoyed the Two Ronnies. A different sort of humor than the zany madcap Pythons. I have a weakness for puns and wordplay, which is what the Ronnies do best. And I always looked forward to Corbett's monologues.
It's all subjective, of course.
And Pertwee's was my favorite. Okay, Jo Grant, really.
Posted by: Vaucanson's Duck at January 08, 2012 03:46 PM (OFJiW)
Combustable Vulnerable Expendable 79
The USS Ommaney Bay (CVE-79) was the twenty-fifth of the fifty Casablanca-class escort carrier built. Constructed in just over two months by the Kaiser Company shipyard in Vancouver, WA, she weighed in at just over 10000 tons at full load. At full steam, she could move her crew of 860 men and the embarked "composite wing" of 28 planes at 19kts. Like most other escort carriers, she wasn't designed to fight with the fleet. Instead, CVEs were to be used first as stopgaps, then when bigger carriers became available, to free up the more capable CVs and CVLs to hunt for bigger targets. In effect, the CVE became a air support unit, providing air cover for amphibious landings. It was in this role that she was off Leyte as part of Taffy 2 when Admiral Kurita's fleet famously attacked Taffy 3. Ommaney Bay helped sink one of the Japanese cruisers and aided in the defeat of the larger Japanese force. And it was in the air support role that the Ommaney Bay was going to serve as she transited the Sulu Sea.
1
Hmm. I never thought about a local shipyard having contributed to the WWII Pacific fleet... to the Wikipedia!
Posted by: GreyDuck at January 03, 2012 10:35 PM (eHm8o)
2
The three Kaiser yards in the Columbia River area weren't the big ones in the company (the four SF yards held that honor), but they still could crank out the ships... at least "smaller" ones.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 03, 2012 11:09 PM (f/6aJ)
3
A family friend served on the Guadalcanal. I've never had much of an opportunity to talk to him about it, but he let me look through his "cruise book", and asked me to restore the print of the carrier on the cover.
Posted by: Ben at January 04, 2012 09:11 AM (RalIr)
IIRC Kaiser also had shipyards at Swan Island in the Willamette in Portland. (Which is misnamed because it isn't really an island.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 04, 2012 10:10 AM (+rSRq)
5
Well, that was kind of the point of escort carriers. If we insisted on fleet-carrier quality, then we'd get fleet carriers... but only a handful of them, which would generally be elsewhere (and require a screen of their own, of course). Escort carriers were cheap enough that you could afford to park them with the transports while the invasion came along... or lose half a dozen and not significantly change the strategic outlook of the war.
So the question is, what would a modern CVE look like? Converted merchant ship with a drone payload? Build enough of those and things could get scary...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 04, 2012 11:55 PM (pWQz4)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 05, 2012 12:49 AM (+rSRq)
7
More along the lines of a modified Atlantic Conveyor, if we follow the original RN's original concept for escort carriers.
Posted by: cxt217 at January 05, 2012 06:04 PM (f81z8)
8
Considering the fate of the Atlantic Conveyor, that's not a happy thought.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 06, 2012 12:53 AM (GJQTS)
9
The fate of the Atlantic Conveyor wasn't that dissimilar from that of the Ommaney Bay. Maybe it's a better comparison than we think (and I think it's a pretty good one).
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 06, 2012 08:02 AM (f/6aJ)
10
At least Ommaney Bay could attempt to defend herself - one of the reasons Atlantic Conveyor was sunk was because she lacked passive or active defenses (Due to time, priorities, and whether an auxilary could be armed - as well as the Harriers she carried being transferred, as planned, to Hermes and Invincible.). Otherwise, as Wonderduck says, she fitted the escort carrier concept pretty well, especially as a mobilization design that can go into service very, very quickly (Which almost all modern warships can not.).
Posted by: cxt217 at January 06, 2012 03:57 PM (f81z8)
11
As it turned out, a container ship makes a wonderful auxiliary carrier. Now, one might question the wisdom of putting the entire aerial component of your land forces on one incredibly juicy soft target, but nobody can question that the use of the Atlantic Conveyor in the AVG role worked brilliantly.
Until it took two Exocets into its merchy hull, that is.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 06, 2012 06:21 PM (f/6aJ)
12
To be fair, it's easy to question the wisdom of a lot of things that were done in the Falklands. They're really, really lucky not to have lost Canberra...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 06, 2012 08:31 PM (pWQz4)
13
The Atlantic Conveyor was a very austere version of the A.R.A.P.A.H.O.
concept developed jointly between the US and the Brits in the '70s. The
concept called for a ski jump and 2-4 point defence systems. (seawolf in
the UK version) The idea was to store dozens of kits so that container ships could quickly be converted to mini carriers. As far as I know the kits were never made and Atlantic Conveyor was put together pretty much on the fly.
I think the Atlantic Conveyor is actually closer to a MAC than a CVE.
Posted by: brickmuppet at January 06, 2012 09:20 PM (EJaOX)
14
My father, Joseph J. Grass was on the Ommaney Bay from commissioning until she was sunk.
Posted by: Jerry Grass at June 13, 2012 07:36 PM (OC5ri)
15
I hope he continued his naval career afterwards!
Posted by: Wonderduck at June 13, 2012 08:22 PM (V/OLv)
Touring Skyrim
I've played a good 25 hours of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim over the past week, and will freely admit that I'm just agog over the thing. The music and sound is astonishingly good. Voice-acting is excellent for video games (average for just about any other form of entertainment, though). The action is entertaining, puzzles are hard without being impossible, and Bethesda seems to have fixed the horrible level scaling problems of Oblivion (and to a lesser extent, Fallout 3). No more bandits wearing Ebony armor and carrying Daedric longswords!
Where the game really impresses, however, are the graphics. I'm not talking about the amazing vistas (which are rightly jawdropping), but just the incidentals. For example, this scene:
Yes, that's right: it's a Skyrim chicken. But look around the scene, too... everything looks so gosh-darned gorgeous, it's breathtaking. It goes without saying that motion is everywhere: the waterwheel is turning, there's a little bit of smoke from a campfire wafting by, the chickens walk around, and on and on.
It's not all chickens and woodpiles, though. The above is inside a watchtower that, over time, collapsed into the nearby lake... and was taken over by a few necromancers. Poor guy up there was just looking for a place to keep the weather off his head while he slept. The atmospherics make the scene creepy as all heck when you walk into the room: water leaking in, odd lighting, and echoing sounds just made me want to turn around and walk out.
They say that Skyrim has a history of amusing glitches. I've only seen one, the conjoined guards there in the lower right. Both heads turned to follow me around, too, so it's not "just" a glitchy graphic.
This? Oh, just another piece of glorious Skyrimic scenery. One of the moons with the Northern Lights shining nearby... it goes without saying that they shimmered and moved just like the auroras I've seen in real life. I spent a good 10 minutes of real time watching them, until I was attacked by a pack of wolves.
A dragon, shortly before it decided that it really wanted nothing more in life than to kill me and chew on my bones. It didn't get a chance to, though, as during the fight, I fell off a poorly-placed cliff. Oops.
I may have mentioned this, but Skyrim does "big" very, very well. Above, watching the sun rise from atop a mountain peak near Azura's Shrine.
No sad girls visible... lots of snow, though.
I've tried very hard not to gush about Skyrim for the past week, I'll admit. Either you're already playing it and don't need me to, or you don't play videogames and won't care about that sort of thing. I'm sure there are others out there who have done a better job of gushing than I ever will. Still, I couldn't not do it. So there you go... a whole buncha Skyrim love.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 02, 2012 12:35 AM (PiXy!)
2
For all its failings, it's operating on a scale that's an order of magnitude larger than an ordinary game. Say what you will about Bethseda, but for ambition, their games are unmatched.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 02, 2012 01:46 AM (pWQz4)
When I see those pictures, what it says to me is that they spend a titanic amount of time and resources on model-making. I can't imaging just how huge must be the library of meshes and textures.
Lots of games shortcut those, and we're all used to seeing dozens or hundreds of copies of The Box or The Explosive Barrel. It looks like these guys didn't take quite so much of a shortcut.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 02, 2012 04:45 PM (+rSRq)
5
From what I've read, all the terrain in the game is custom mapped. If a player goes to that exact point near the Shrine of Azura, they'll be able to get the exact same picture. They didn't take quite as much care on "The Box" or "The Barrel," but there are multiples of "The Box."
Only one chicken model, though.
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 02, 2012 06:52 PM (f/6aJ)